You Made Me
by AfterForev3R
Summary: Deidara learns where his brother had gone after he went missing from his life. He can only hate Itachi for being a similar sort of older brother, pushing away from his help. Until his brother's history comes back to find him and he needs it. His brother had been the artist that taught him to create. In that way, his brother had created him. But he's feeling unfinished. You Made Me.
1. Chapter 1: The Bird

Chapter One

The Bird

~You Made Me

**Author's Note**

This story takes place earlier into Shippuden, before any one of the Akatsuki members die. In this world, Madara reveals himself earlier in, and is the current leader of the Akatsuki. There's not much mention of Pain.

This story is strongly Diedara orientated, focusing on the complexities of his living in the Akatsuki and dealing with the tragedies of his past life. It contains a considerable number of sex scenes, and not just of Deidara x Itachi. Please be forewarned.

This is expected to be an ongoing story, so please give me an indication of who's reading it. I'd appreciate the support.~

This story may seem to hold a darker undertone. It's intended to at this point: this story is a fairly tragic recount of what _could_ have happened to Deidara through his life but probably never did.

NOTE: I should also mention that Hikaru, Deidara's brother, is of course an OC. His name means 'ray of light'.I have no idea who Deidara's actual family is, or whether they are even mentioned. But for the purpose of this story, I have created a brother for him. Please excuse any discrepancies to the actual story on this regard.

The Kumori do not exist either. They are an added aspect whose name means 'shadow, or cloudiness'. I'll do my best to explain them as they become important.

{Y*M*M}

"_The worst thing you can try to do is cling to something that is gone, or to recreate it."_  
Johnette Napolitano

Deidara felt breathless. He was still trying to steady himself. But his body wasn't complying. His mouth trembled, his chest racked for air. He could hear his own breath as it erratically intercepted the silence.

He could feel his body tensing, unwilling. Incompliant.

With his mouth held open for air, he watched Madara close the space between their faces. It wasn't the first time. It would never be the last time. But it was still an uncomfortable surprise.

Madara was working his way further down Deidara. It was unsettling, to have anyone that close. It was invasive.

Deidara's feelings weren't nearly as exposed as his body was. He'd withheld his fears, fearing them childish. Inadequate. He had nothing to stand on to tell Madara no. He'd been merged into the Akatsuki, one of the strongest powers of the age. He'd found welcome. He'd taken solace in the concept.

Of course he hadn't understood it then.

Madara was rushing. He was usually as intense, but commonly always slowed it down. Marked it as deliberate. Tonight was different. He wanted easy access. He sought instance. Deidara couldn't predict his movements, although he recognized them as they arrived. He slid his eyes shut and willed his mind into absence. It was something, alright, to be welcomed into the Akatsuki. Drawn into their rankings. Even though just a child.

A pretty child, his father had told him that. His guardians had told him that. Madara had told him that again. Only the words meant something he'd come to resent on Madara's tongue.

The first night he'd arrived at Akatsuki, Deidara had laughed with Madara. He'd gathered an image of what he reckoned was to come from his Akatsuki lifestyle. He'd misjudged. Misplaced his landing. He faced a hard fall.

When Madara had first made this part of his job known, Deidara hadn't grasped the severity of his situation enough to ward it off. It had happened to him. Before his response time, before his comprehension of the matter. It had been too late, he had endured it. And if it had happened once, it would happen again. Now, it kept happening.

He'd tried to act grown up about it, tried to hold his head high when he passed the other Akatsuki members. But then gradually, it had gotten worse for him. His ego was trembling, almost violent. For he had lost what he'd come in with.

A pretty child, they'd used as praise. What good had being pretty brought him?

Deidara bit his tongue when it was over, to stifle the scream lodged in his throat. It was no use trying to find a better existence now. The only door out from the Akatsuki was death. Either that or the strength to overcome Madara. Is that how Orochimaru had achieved it? He'd overcome this man?

Deidara could not even muster himself to meet the man's eyes. Maybe that was a result of having been so vulnerable under him all these past nights. His mind had already decided: it yielded to this enemy.

Resistance was painful, that was the lesson Deidara had been taught a long time ago. Deidara wasn't sure he'd be capable of differentiating the power position of their nights together from their power capacities out on the battlefield. Maybe he would concede to Madara there too.

With the switch of a lamp, the bed flooded in clarity. Eyes tight against the light, Deidara looked up blurrily into Madara's glazed expression. Madara seemed troubled. It had wrecked them both, then.

Deidara looked away, on purpose. He had nothing to say to him. They spoke no words when they entered this world. It held the surreal quality of an illusion, which Deidara necessitated. He seemed able to convince himself, through it, that the night had in fact never happened.

{Y*M*M}

"It's too bad you won't admit it."

"Shut up."

"You should really just admit it."

"Sasori." Deidara pronounced his whole name, glaring daggers at his partner. "I'm fine."

"You're still sleeping, Deidara." And there was almost a thread of care woven into the words. The two ninja bound their way through the canopy in a rush of green. "And you're in pain."

"I am not." Deidara felt his argument dithering. It was pointless to defend against something that was true. His whole body fought with the weight of the night's strain. Madara had gotten it over with quickly. So quickly, that Deidara still wheeled from it the morning after. "I'm fine, okay. Let's just…get this over with."

Sasori cast him unconvinced eyes, observing his unusual pattern of movement as he tried to navigate a body that didn't want to be moved. He thought it looked almost puppet like. "Whatever."

Their mission took them to the nearest borderline of Kumori, an agency hidden deep in the forests in a location few dared to cross. The rebel nation. Kumori represented rogue ninja from across continents. Nearly every single one of them had been expelled on the grounds of stolen forbidden arts. Unlike the Akatsuki, they were not all ninja veterans. But at the same time, that meant there were so many more of them allowed in. Those stolen jutsus were being housed in their village's creation, honed and distributed between the members. They were surprisingly adept , their leader made sure of it. He aimed to distort the humans who walked through his doors into new beings of unimaginable destructive capabilities. Most of them had been disfigured by the forbidden practices they'd survived and incorporated.

Deidara felt his stomach churn at the anticipation of colliding with one. Of course it had been an unstated rule that the Akatsuki and Kumori leave one another undisturbed. There was no need to waste numbers on each other. They both saw the sense in avoiding meaningless warfare.

It was the fact that he couldn't depend on his body to save him just then that concerned him. He ached all over. The last thing he needed was reason to jump around.

Deidara's heart stammered as Sasori drew them to an abrupt halt a few steps off from their destination.

"Sasori man?"

"Shoosh." Sasori bid him quietly, slinking from the tree coverage with one hand out to withhold his partner. "Stay here, in denial if you want to." Sasori flit into the distance, a diminishing black speck.

Deidara tried to apprehend the situation before Sasori fell out of sight, but it was too late. He'd been left alone in the tree leaves. Deidara willed to move forward but his legs rejected him also. An unutterable moment of solitude crossed his conscious and he felt faint. There wasn't much sunlight leaking in between the treetops, but he could still see the light from the lamp flooding the bed at the reminder of bright light. He could still see Madara's troubled eyes assessing him. He could even hear, distinct in the amplification of the silence, Madara's worrying words.

"_Well Deidara, I'm guessing you know it already. But I love you."_

A strangled sound escaped Deidara's chest, involuntarily freed at the memory. His body rocked and his hands gripped the nearest tree trunk. The wood was coarse and cold as the birds resting between its heights radiated out on spirited outcries at the disturbance. Calm down, Deidara thought in panic, hating himself for having trudged up the memory here with Sasori due any minute. Just cool it.

The words were lost in the vastness of his mind, where the fear of Madara reigned. Where the fear was constant.

"Calm down." Deidara whispered on an intense breath, saying the words out loud at last so that he could experience them. "It's not that bad." So why was he shaking? "It's not that bad…"

"What's not that bad?" Sasori's return intruded on the moment of sincerity.

Deidara spun back at him, no longer so brave as to pretend he didn't need him there. "Hey. Sasori man."

"You look crazy." Sasori said bluntly, with a perturbed shake of his head.

"I'm fine." Diedara forced the lie another time. It was probably worth lying to Sasori. Truth would lead to questions. Questions would lead to more truth. Of course he was hesitant to selling out Madara, but really it was his pride that kept him in check. What would their relationship be reduced to, if Sasori knew their blonde haired blue eyed member was only part time ninja veteran, and part time just Madara's personal whore.

Sasori allowed the privacy and ignored the sick expression that found his partner's face. "Alright then. Well the enemy's in numbers. Want to divide this?"

"Hmm." It was unconvincing. Deidara tried again. "Yeah, sure. Let's do this."

"You don't have to, you know. I'm probably better off without you." Sasori moved away again, throwing back towards Deidara's injured eyes, "There aren't that many of them. Save yourself for the next mission."

Which would only be days apart from this one. Days of resting to regain himself till then.

Sasori disappeared out ahead.

Initially offended, Deidara suddenly interpreted that message. The hidden manner in which his partner could exhibit care for him.

Save yourself, Deidara picked out from his partner's words.

"Thank you." He muttered quietly, standing back.

The respite was temporary.

Deidara could see them move, their dark shapes breaking into view underneath the shafts of light from the canopy. His eyes darted after each form as it crossed by, tallying them. Six. There were six of the things. They were headed straight towards Sasori.

Deidara clung onto the tree for a minute, unsure of himself. Were those the Kumori people? Were those even people?

The obligation to warn Sasori wavered as he tested his feet. They weren't going to hold him, let alone carry him. He sunk down into his tree side, contemplating yelling.

When one appeared beside him.

"Hey!" He spat the word, stumbling backwards into his tree. It took all of his willpower not to yell Sasori's name. It wasn't a Kumori.

Itachi Uchiha. The pressing eyes of a man unconcerned whether you lived, died or hid in a tree.

"The hell?" Deidara barked, feeling stultified. "Are you doing here? You're not doing this mission…"

Itachi's eyes dipped down to the disgraced Akatsuki. He snorted. "Neither are you."

Deidara glared at his daring. Itachi was preoccupied with the situation by the time Deidara's comeback sprung to mind.

"I don't thi-"

"Stay here." Itachi said, turning simply.

"Don't patronize me!"

Itachi dissipated into crows, which Deidara reacted to by flinging his arm up in front of his face guardedly. When he looked back out over his sleeve, he could hear his team out ahead of him. Some glorious battle had engaged. He was going to be remembered a coward if this one made history.

Deidara staggered to standing, his mind torn. The battle sounded angry. They had not come here to fight Kumori. Their mission employers had merely selected an area just outside of their territory to kill a few ninja.

Conflict had been inevitable, what was Madara, stupid?

Deidara flinched as he took a step again, feeling the pain of an after morning descending on him. Well of course he was stupid.

After several tense moments of relentless combat in the distance, silence fell. Then Deidara felt another presence nearby him in the stillness. He snapped his head to his left, where an unnatural shadow had fallen. He remembered his comeback for the lurker.

"Like I said, Itachi. I don't think…"

Deidara inhaled sharply, the dark end of a kunai set to his throat. He felt the alertness only an enemy spurred.

"Itachi is killing them." An irritated voice stated. He tightened his hold on the kunai. "Get them out of there."

"Who?"

"The Akatsuki. Send them the fuck back!"

"We're not after the Kumori…"

The kunai stiffened at his throat, dangerously closer. "Send them back!"

"Okay." The whites of Deidara's eyes were showing as he locked sight straight down at the kunai. He'd have agreed to anything. "Okay, just let me out…"

"Deidara!" Sasori hailed, flying inwards and stamping down onto the tree. He was breathless. His hands were bloodied. He seemed furious that he'd gotten to his helpless friend too late to avoid the exact situation he was facing.

The Kumori rogue pulled the kunai up against Deidara's prickling throat as a warning. The death trap winked at them in the sunlight. "One step closer, you bitch."

"They're all dead." Sasori raised his voice at the man. "What are you fighting for?"

Deidara felt his head race. The Akatsuki had killed Kumori? Why would they have dared to…

He didn't have time to speculate. Sasori had launched. The kunai had followed.

It was within his last hopeful breath of consciousness that Deidara realized he'd been spared by inches. A strand of blonde hair was cut free onto the wind.

The rest blurred together for him. The overwhelming sensation of adrenaline and exhaustion mingled inside.

Someone's hands held him. Deidara felt the world slipping, but he caught Sasori's furious movement as he slit the throat of the man who'd near executed his partner.

And then darkness.

{Y*M*M}

It wasn't making sense. The lines were merging together into unreadable forms, with every letter appearing the same. Deidara's eyes strained against the dim lighting to detect a word like 'pain' or 'relief.' None of the bottles seemed to hold those.

"Come on." Deidara murmured, flinching just from standing upright. He whisked up another bottle from the medical shelf. He really wasn't looking forward to getting caught in here, or having the question raised.

What're you doing in the medical room, Deidara? Are you hurt? What happened?

A bottle of strikingly blue pills called out to him. Deidara's hands found it gingerly. 'Pain Killer'; the label could not have been more distinct to one who needed it.

The door juddered gently to his left all of a sudden, setting a spring in his step as he darted to one side. The curtain that guarded the single bedside present in the medical room provided shelter.

Deidara's hands were still tight around the bottle of pills he'd come in for, urging the intruder to leave quickly as he ducked behind the draping. What if it was Madara, his mind flashed the worst fathomable image. He sucked his breath in so that he could hold his mouth quiet.

It wasn't Madara, for the best part. Itachi Uchiha had stony eyes as he brought his hesitant shape into the room, one sleeve suspended in front of his mouth.

Deidara watched him rummage through the shelf for bottles as clumsily as he had. Unease crept into his mind. And if Itachi was as evasive about the cause of his vulnerability as Deidara was? Would he hate him for being there watching him?

Itachi appeared more deliberate in his search, scratching for what he wanted. Not finding it. He coughed a broken sound that almost seemed too weak to be his. Blood spewed from his lips and caught on his awaiting sleeve.

With a forced exhalation, Itachi tried again. He was desperate for something that apparently he hadn't found the first time round on the shelf.

Deidara's hands pressed guiltily around the bottle, and he passed it his gaze. Probably this, he thought dismally. He was probably holding onto the exact thing Itachi was looking for, which was a sure way to get found.

Tentative in case he made a noise, Deidara slipped the lid off the pill bottle without diverting his eyes from Itachi. He tipped four of them into his hand, and then eased those four down into his pocket to be kept. Then he placed the resealed bottle down on the other side of the curtain, holding his breath that it wouldn't prove suspect enough to inspect his side of the curtain.

Itachi halted, drawing short of breath as he heaved against his agony. Deidara felt his own pain must be diminutive in comparison, judging by that reaction. He set his gaze on Itachi's breathless figure.

He held no sympathy for the Uchiha. It had probably been his own exploitation of forbidden powers that had resulted in his sudden wave of damage now. The Uchiha were driven beyond the boundaries of their limits by their over seeking minds. He stood resolute in his decision that he hated the Uchiha, especially this one that had made him join the Akatsuki.

Cough blood, you foolish bastard. Deidara thought in a moment of childish spite. Karma says that's my blood on your hands.

{Y*M*M}

Having eventually seen Itachi leave, Deidara felt safe enough to slip from the medical room. He'd downed the pills. All four of them. He hadn't been sure how many you needed. He hadn't managed to read the bottle before he'd placed it in Itachi's sights and lost it to him.

His mind hung now, suspended between the realms of conscious of the realms of sleep. The pills were descending with potency, numbing the pain, along with his thoughts and his energy and every other viable part of him.

He wanted to get some sleep in, but Sasori and he shared a room. He couldn't face Sasori with his faded gaze that spoke of drugging. He wasn't even sure he'd know how to thank him for his earlier rescue. He knew he should ask questions about what had happened back at the Kumori Village. But care fell second to his miserable headache. So he paced himself around outside the door, a little unsure of himself. A little too dizzy to be sure what his pride should be worth just then.

He sunk himself down against the wall adjacent to their bedroom door, his eyes sealed shut, blocking off the light. He pulled his arms up around his knees and buried his faint head between them. It was proving difficult to stay awake and difficult to get to sleep.

It wasn't his failure in combat that lurked in his mind, keeping it awake. It was the distinct image Of Madara, diminishing him to a ninja who failed in combat. It wasn't only his body suffering. Internally, he was fragmenting. How had everything amounted to this so rapidly? Being taken advantage of was one thing, but imposing love when Deidara knew only hate? Wasn't what Madara had done to him, surely, surely out of hate? Where the hell had love come into that equation?

A light broke out and trailed under their bedroom door. Sasori had awoken. Deidara could hear him stirring around inside the bedroom, before he'd pulled the door open to exit. Deidara's pitiful figure confronted him.

"Deidara. I was going to look for you." Sasori said frankly, raking his eyes across him. "You're one broken looking piece of work."

"Art's a bang." Deidara muttered dryly, eyes half open. With a sigh, he reluctantly sunk his head back between his arms again.

Sasori ventured over warily. "Are you sick or something?"

Deidara didn't know how to frame it right. He had no hold on his thoughts, so all he could do was ensure they never came out.

"Are you hurt?" Sasori went on, raining questions with a deepening frown. "Are you angry?"

All of those things, Deidara thought dejectedly. And more.

The impending silence was shattered by a distant outcry. Sasori flipped his head back. "Itachi." He said the name as though it fit the commotion naturally. It hadn't even been a battle injury. It was something happening inside the Uchiha rogue.

"How long has he been sick for?" Deidara didn't bother conceal what he knew, his thoughts were too fogged to care. Sasori's eyes wavered down to him.

"Well…a while."

There was a crashing sound from beyond the passage. Itachi's pain was severe for him to be breaking things.

Sasori sighed, returning his focus to Deidara. "But I'm more worried about you. I can't have you abandoning me on the field."

Deidara just managed to look up at that.

"I'm serious," Sasori went on. "Tell me what's wrong, or don't. But either way, fix it." He bordered on the door again, before turning his head back. "Oh yeah. And the pay we got for that last mission is on your bed, waiting for you. Goodnight." He left the door open as an inviting gesture, but then he still turned the bedroom light off, plunging Deidara's hallway into darkness.

Itachi's outcry still demented the atmosphere, even though it had passed them. Deidara shivered at the memory of it. It was a sincerely painful sound. It halted reality.

It reminded him of what he sounded like on some nights, when Madara was towering over him. Genuine distress was something he could empathize with even an Uchiha over.

He couldn't pinpoint why the tears were pricking behind his eyes, but he squashed them there with one determined swipe of his sleeve. No, crying was the last step. The last resort. Overcoming would always be first.

Deidara waited up in the silence for a while, wondering if Itachi would scream out again.

He didn't. Sleep won the war over conscious.

{Y*M*M}

A long time ago, Deidara had walked the world as though it was white as snow. With honor. He had made sure every step he took left the path as unblemished as previously.

Now there was nothing but a dark road. A black passage, with no meaning between beginning and end.

Deidara had stumbled around, unbalanced by the sinister, unexpected weight of the nothingness. How much emptiness seemed to weigh.

Deidara felt shameless, as he stole into Hidan and Kakazu's conversation. "I hope that he does die."

Hidan turned a curious expression on him, to contrast Kakuzu's hard fixed stare.

"What makes you say that, Deidara?" Kakuzu asked with uncertainty.

"Mercy." Deidara speculated, shrugging. "Itachi Uchiha is one breath away from his last, so I hope that instead of pain, he finds death."

It made sense to Deidara. A long time ago, his brother Hikaru had drilled it into his mind that death was not the worst thing. There were much worse things. His brother leaving him had made him understand that.

"And you're wishing him death?" Kakuzu finished somberly, eyes tracing Deidara's sleep deprived gaze inquisitively.

Deidara nodded, which Hidan burst out laughing to. "How sweet man. Can't imagine what you give your friends for Christmas. Cremation maybe?"

"I'm wary, Deidara," Kakuzu insisted sharply, rising up from his seat at the long Akatsuki table. "Of what motivates you to call death a mercy."

Deidara resisted shrinking back from Kakuzu's tall stature as it rose before him. He located words in time. "Well you wouldn't get it. You don't stay a room or two down the passageway from him. He's screaming the nights away."

Kakuzu paralleled the theory with Deidara's purple half-moon ridden eyes. Perhaps his lack of sleep came from the Uchiha's story of suffering. "So it's a sacrifice for…your own sake."

Deidara wasn't sure which way down the mountain drop was worse. He flicked his gaze away disinterestedly. "Whatever you think it is." He hadn't meant to share that much with them. His brother's words were always finding him at the wrong time. "Now, excuse me."

He ran from one train accident into another as he reached the doorway. Uchiha Itachi stood before him, eyes narrowed. Both saw their own exhaustion reflected in the other's expression. Itachi cast his gaze down at the young Akatsuki member, whose honest blue eyes promised they'd fight until their last if he threatened them. Itachi wasn't goaded by the hostility.

"Here." He freed the word from behind the guard of his Akatsuki robe, extending his hand to Deidara. "You shouldn't take more than three."

Deidara's eyes stung the bottle he was proffering him. The strident blue pills. The most destructive of healers he'd come across. He took it, unthinkingly. He was going to kill the same pain the pills had caused in his mind with the devils themselves.

Only then had the idea struck him. "Why are you giving this to me?" More importantly, how had he known Deidara needed them? Had he noticed him behind the curtain there, after all? Had he not been too blinded by pain to be ninja enough to sense his presence?

Itachi's mouth was deceptively hidden behind his robe as he spoke. "I saw you in the passage." Last night, Deidara presumed he meant. "I thought you looked sick. And since I'd found the bottle out of its usual place, I figured you'd tried taking them."

"Spying, huh?" Deidara said ironically, before childishly thrusting the pill bottle back into Itachi. "I don't need pills. Overdose on them, for all I care." He made to veer around Itachi, but was cut off instantly by the Uchiha's arm. "You want to make war, Itachi?" Deidara's voice arched in his frustration, a pressing headache mingling with rising anger. "I'll take you right now!"

"Say one more word, and I'm going to tell them."

Deidara's mind caught on the foreboding whisper, perfectly sinister without a single change in tenor. He forced a reaction from his vocal chords. "Tell them…what…" His eyes made sure to find his. "Itachi?"

Itachi snorted as though Deidara was helpless, returning the pills to him. "Take three." He reminded him. Then he swept away.

{Y*M*M}

_A Few Days Later_

"What is this?" Madara's voice verged on disgust. Deidara flushed scarlet when he realized what it was he was holding.

"Just tablets." He didn't dare swipe the bottle back from his superior, even though he ached to. "Just for headaches."

Madara examined the blue pills carefully, before transferring his unimpressed gaze to Deidara. "Is there something you're not telling me?"

"Telling you?" Deidara repeated incredulously, unsure which Deidara persona to take on. Was he Deidara, reporting back from a mission or something? Or was he Deidara, the quiet bedmate who said everything without words?

"Tell me, Deidara," Madara persisted. "Is this for after me?"

The dreamlike quality of the night was collapsing against the stark reality of talking about it. Deidara felt his face burning. "I'm…not…"

"Am I hurting you?" Madara's eyes crossed his in pursuit of knowing everything.

Deidara was trembling, still fully clothed, but feeling more exposed than ever. He sat up straight on the bed. "Well…" His voice broke off, and then it seemed impossible that he would ever fill the silence again. Madara waited patiently for him to try. "The thing is…"

He was brought to a silence again. Madara had pulled him closer, wound his arms around him. He was breathing the scent of his hair in and it made Deidara's neck tingle.

"Deidara, honestly. There's nothing you can't tell me at this point."

At this point? Deidara's mind choked on the words. Why? Where the hell were they?

Deidara sat open mouthed against the truths he could never voice, he could never tell this man, who suddenly wanted to know everything. Who suddenly cared about the voice to the body it had been with for so long now.

He was asking Deidara to confide in him. He wanted truth. Deidara couldn't tell him the truth he wanted outright. He wouldn't like Deidara's true feelings.

Madara spoke on his behalf. "I wondered, if I was making you afraid, Deidara. But you were always so sure of yourself that I passed it by. But now you can't even talk to me, can you? So just nod for me. Am I hurting you?"

That was unfair! Confidence and trust were two separate entities. Deidara couldn't say the words because they couldn't be heard, not because they couldn't be spoken.

"Yes." Deidara said brashly, since the irritation had provoked his worst side. He was too tired to monitor his behavior. "In case my screaming didn't tip you off."

Madara scoped him out with interest. He hadn't been snapped at for so long, he'd forgotten it was even possible. "So you can still to talk me. Even about this?"

"I'd rather not talk to you about anything. Can we just get this over with?" He'd never said so much before, let alone so vehemently. He wasn't sure where he was mustering the courage from. His irritation, most likely.

Madara's hands weaved up through his hair, threading the band out and setting it loose in a single golden cascade. Deidara shifted in Madara's arms uncomfortably. He didn't like the sound of his own voice when it was trapped in this setting. It sounded anxious.

"Are you asking or ordering?" Madara raised the question suddenly, tempting Deidara's mouth with a kiss as he drew him in.

Deidara blanched slightly. He pulled away in revulsion muttering, "Neither."

Madara leaned away at that, occupied meanwhile with stroking through Deidara's hair. It was always faultless. A soft river the color of honey.

Diedara pulled his eyes shut as Madara's grip tightened on the threads. "Ah."

Madara's hold grew taut, a relentless action that Deidara couldn't pull away from without getting hurt further.  
"Ow," Deidara muttered quietly, usually a compliant partner through pain, but this time voicing against it. Since his voice had found this world anyway. "That's too tight."

"Let me explain another aspect of me to you. You're allowed to talk to me, Deidara. I really want you to. But for so long as you do, remember who it is you're talking to, " Madara's words were pregnant with venom. He didn't waver even to dispel the tension the night was imposed with.

Deidara was released with the tension of the pull still throbbing at his brain. He reached for his head, but Madara clutched at his hand before it had made contact.

"You are still aware of your position, aren't you?" Madara asked Deidara, in a tone bordering on darkness.

Deidara bit back a retort the instant he felt threatened. Still, it seemed his anger was outweighing his fear more every night. "Of course."

"You are under me, Deidara." Madara reminded him anyway, sliding the blonde down onto the bed beneath him. Words fell short.

Deidara let another night envelop him, not sure how to get from it. Wishing he'd taken more than three pills.

{Y*M*M}

His room was cold without Sasori.

Still, it was warmer than Madara's bed. Deidara pulled himself into his own sheets with a weak sigh, wondering if Sasori was bitter about having been sent on his late night mission alone.

Deidara had been excused on Madara's order. Despite the fact that Deidara would have much rather gone with Sasori.

It was too late to be thinking it through. Deidara breathed numbly until his mind wafted towards sleep. Midway to the dream world, his mind found memories.

_Deidara was seven. He was standing, staring out with bright hopeful eyes. His brother knew where he was waiting. So why hadn't he come already?_

_His brother Hikaru used to run up between six or seven other boys. They all wore important masks. They'd ask about his little sister. He'd laugh, and tell them Deidara was a boy._

_His brother would knock Deidara's chin up when he zoned out. "Don't think too hard." He'd tell him with a smile. His father used to say Deidara was a pretty child. His guardians had said it again._

_His brother had always told him was a smart child. Deidara preferred it that way. He was the one who looked inside. _

_Deidara had always known his brother was important. He ran with the highest of the village's veterans, protecting the Hidden Stone village. But no one could perceive how important he was the way Deidara saw him._

_Deidara was spewing words as Hikaru caught up to him that day. Rapidly. They were tangling in his throat because he only had eight minutes. Then his brother would be gone again._

_His brother drew his sibling's blonde hair back behind his ears. "Say it clearly, Deidara. I can't hear you."_

_Deidara hadn't realized how much he wanted to tell his brother. The short interval between missions was never enough time. His brother always promised him he'd return later._

_He usually did, but later was a long way off, with many wasted hours in between. Deidara had seen his brother's rock jutsu. He'd seen it rear up into animal art forms before driving into the village's enemies with decisive death. All he'd managed to fill the time with had been reconstructing them. Out of clay, since he couldn't bend rock yet. Deidara had made snakes first, because they were easier. Then one day he'd made a bird._

_His brother had brought him a stone bird a day later. He'd told him it was permanent. A forever type of art. Deidara had touched it gently, even though it was solid as rock. _

"_Don't worry, you won't break it. You know, unless you really try." Hikaru had told him laughingly._

_Well several years later, he had tried. Tried so hard._

_The bird had been smashed to pieces._

_Deidara had tried his whole life after the betrayal had made him break it to reassemble them. But it hadn't wanted to be whole again. So he'd kept a fragment. A fragment of rock, from the village, and the brother, that had once been his._

_Permanent forms of art._

_Whatever._

_Deidara's art went out with a bang._

Deidara pushed the memories aside, fighting them into eventual sleep. It was hard hating someone you loved.

He could hear talking, echoing somewhere down the hall. He roused from sleep only seconds after he'd fallen into it.

"Sasori!' Someone bellowed. The sound of Kisame's jutsu trailed after it.

Deidara flipped bolt upright in bed, adrenaline reviving him. It was still so dark. What were they yelling about?

"Deidara." Sasori was at their door, filling the frame. His eyes were winced open, his mouth hung in the search for air. Blood trickled down from between his eyes.

"Sasori…" Deidara was cut short by a rebounding explosion.

What was happening? How badly had the pills disorientated him?

"Deidara!" Sasori pursued above the overwhelming din. "Get up, get out."

"What's happening?" Deidara cried, falling onto his feet and barely catching his balance. His hips hurt. "Are we being attacked?"

Sasori didn't answer him. He slid down to his knees. The air had been knocked from him. Everything closed into darkness.

"Sasori man!" Deidara dropped to his side, urgent as the panic choked the atmosphere. "Get back up!"

"Hidan!' Kakuzu was shouting from further away. "Don't rush at him!"

Hidan's maniacal laughter ensured all that he wasn't listening. Itachi's fire jutsu and Kisame's water jutsu stinging the air were discernable even out of sight.

Deidara looked up unwillingly. The noise was everywhere. But they were further away than they sounded.

"What's happening?" He repeated into Sasori's ear, which only earned him an incoherent murmuring.

Without any indication of the fight at hand, Deidara rose to join it.

"Deidara wait." The voice of Itachi landed from nearby. He was approaching from down the passageway.

Deidara's eyes flew at him. "What is this Itachi?"

"It's under control. We just need you to stay out of it."

"Under control?" Deidara spat incredulously, waving his draping sleeve at Sasori. "Sasori is fucking dying!"

"He helped control it." Itachi admitted, quickly taking the arm Deidara had extended. "Let's go."

"Let me go!" Deidara wrested against him, managing to break the hold. His arm whipped up into his chest, where he used it to hold himself. "What's your story?"

Itachi closed their berth and pulled Deidara's arm again. "I need you to follow me." He said seriously. "This is what Sasori came to warn you of."

"Of what? You?" Deidara couldn't wrench away without the element of surprise. His words were his last attempt at breaking them. "I deserve to know what the fuck is happening!"

"They want you." Itachi made it his final plea. Nothing he ever said made sense to Deidara, but those words were especially mystifying.

"Why the hell would anyone want me?" He hadn't realized for how long those dull words had been echoing hollowly in the midst of his mind for.

Itachi didn't humor him. He advanced in a single step that filled the space Deidara had been standing. Deidara ended up in his arms.

"Are you for real?" Deidara screeched, flailing his arm up at Itachi's face. "Put me the fuck down!"

"I detest you almost as much as you do me. Deidara." Itachi assured him, confronting his gaze. He then took them away at a run.

Sasori, Deidara's frantic thoughts bound to. Was Sasori going to die?

Deidara couldn't muster the strength to fight against Itachi. It had been too soon after Madara had finished with him. He was drained of fight.

"Don't help me! Help Sasori!" Deidara demanded, to no one's acknowledgment. Itachi kept them running. Itachi, who was supposed to hate him. It didn't make sense. "Why?" He yelled in a confused outrage. " Why save me?"

{Y*M*M}

"Why save Deidara?" Kakuzu was exclaiming, standing across from the others. "I mean for God's sake, cut your losses where you can afford to."

A sense of separation pervaded the room. The Akatsuki members gathered had their eyes cast down at the floorboards.

Madara sat at the head of the table, each hand buried in the opposite arm's sleeve in a concealed mannerism. His gaze trailed over Hidan, Kisame, and Zetsu, before settling on Kakuzu. "You would dispute my orders, Kakuzu?"

The Akatsuki member checked himself. He shook his head, rarely angered to this point. But the lack of sensical judgment on Madara's part left him wondering. "I don't intend to. I'm merely saying that Deidara does nothing for the Akatsuki. These are the Kumori we're waging war with. We may win, but it will end us. There will be nothing left of us but you if this battle commences."

"This battle has already commenced." The white half of Zetsu pointed out, loyally in Madara's corner.

Kakuzu slid his eyes to him. "And look at how many of us are left." The empty seats of Itachi, Deidara, and Sasori illustrated his words.

The black Zetsu scoffed. "Let's not kid ourselves. Sasori is alive, Itachi is unharmed. Deidara's acting up."

"This is why we shouldn't let children into the Akatsuki." Kakuzu went on. "Their judgment is impaired by their childishness."

"Do you understand the debate you're on about, Kakuzu?" Madara said irritably. "Do you have the vaguest idea?"

"The Kumori want us to hand Deidara over."

"And?"

"And you said no."

"Is that all?"

Kakuzu paused himself, derailed slightly. He tried to fathom any points he could be missing. "If we were to insist no, then war would happen between us." Kakuzu managed eventually. "War between the Akatsuki and the Kumori. The two most revered nations. We'd kill each other."

"I think Madara knows otherwise." Kisame offered his opinion.

Hidan had his eyes set on Kakuzu, bouncing them to Madara each time he spoke, and then back again. He was resting his head on his arms, leaning observantly on the table. He wasn't very politically motivated, but the discussion of the two sides warring intrigued him.

"I'm just saying that by handing over Deidara, we avoid the whole thing." Kakuzu said. His eyes refocused on Madara, whose mask was concealing his true outrage.

"And who next, Kakuzu?" He asked in a dry whisper.

"What?"

"Who next would we just hand over to them? Itachi? You?" Madara rose deliberately. His logic would exceed theirs. "We can't afford to let it be known that the Akatsuki concede to anyone, Kakuzu. We can allow ourselves to avoid combat. But we cannot be seen running from it. I will not let them have anything of mine. We are the Akatsuki, their equal. Who should be allowed to take anything of ours?"

He folded his arms as he stared at them. His true reasons for war would have to remain beneath the surface. "I dismissed their request to hand Deidara over because of pride. This, is a matter of pride. They cannot have anything they want. We are Akatsuki. To yield would be to demean ourselves to their lesser." In reality, he had not thought they'd be driven to war over the matter. How irrational their leader was. "I will not let this agency bend to the threat of war. Or what is the point of it?"

"Agreed." Hidan struck out with, lifting half his arm up. Kakuzu didn't look at him.

"I heard their reasons weren't rash," Kakuzu ventured in with. "I heard the Kumori's reasons were also of pride. Surely a compromise could have been reached. An exchange of veterans, if they wanted Deidara for some matter of pride, so badly? Surely we wouldn't be perceived weak for that, but smart?"

Madara could have killed him on the spot. Deidara's warmth still clung to his skin beneath his velvet black robe. "No." He replied simply, trying to push his personal argument aside. "Why should any real indomitable agency have need to compromise? War will befall any Nation that stands to argue with our decision." The fire in his chest imploded. "Even if it kills us."

Kisame looked him straight on for that. Zetsu tried not to stare, while Hidan flit his excited gaze from his partner to his leader.

"That much is true, Madara." Kakuzu said permissively. "But if that is the attitude we expect to fight with, then we resign ourselves to death." Kakuzu stared directly at Madara in his confidence. "I would much first see us resign ourselves to compromise."

{Y*M*M}

"_It's a bird, Deidara."_

_Deidara had clasped it between his young hands, delicately. The little bird of rock his brother had crafted for him. "Is it mine?"_

"_It's yours."_

_Hope touched Deidara's small mouth. "Why did you make it for me?"_

_He hadn't seen his brother's tears. He'd been too young to hear them in his voice, and too short to see them in his eyes. "Because you'll need a rock. Something that won't break on you."_

_Deidara had stared at the creation curiously on the words, the remnant of a smile on his face. "It won't break?"_

"_Never." _

"_And if it does break?"_

_If I break? Hikaru had thought dismally. "Then it will only break because it had to, Deidara." If I break little brother, if I stop supporting you, if I'm not your rock any longer…_

"_Just keep the bird, okay?" Hikaru had asked him._

_Please, don't take that bird from your sky._

{Y*M*M}

I tried to write this as naturally as possible, but character dialogue still seems a little strained here and there. :/ Please point out the good and the bad as it comes to you. I appreciate any constructive criticism! But please, don't be afraid to let me know what you liked either. :D

~AfterForev3R


	2. Chapter 2: Blood

Chapter Two

Blood

~You Made Me

"_The worst thing you can try to do is cling to something that is gone, or to recreate it."_  
Johnette Napolitano

Every corner of the room merged together in his mind. As though the walls were closing in.

Deidara stood barely an arm's length from Itachi, recollecting what had happened to them.

The fire had blazed beside their every footstep. Sasori had been left behind.

And Itachi had taken them both, at a run, to this point. A room on the far end of the building. The fighting had faded. The noise of a battle's resolution was muted by the impenetrable walls of their hideaway.

And the walls were closing in.

Deidara resisted the urge to hold his head steady, wary of Itachi's assessing presence. He wanted to burst with words. But afraid he'd squeak them, he bit his tongue instead.

Deidara made his message clear without words as he reached the door of the nameless room he'd been brought to. Itachi did likewise.

The Uchiha prohibited his exit silently, barring the way with the front of his body. Deidara glared up at him defiantly.

"Move." He barked the order on his strongest breath, which sounded weak despite his inner will. Segments of the building had faced collapse just out in the hallway. The smoke and the dust clouds billowing off the debris had been inhaled during their flight here. Deidara's throat was scratchy.

Itachi looked on him pitifully for it. "You can't go." He replied firmly. The idea sprung a heat in the blonde's eyes.

Deidara's desperate shove to move him exceeded his tolerance. Itachi pushed Deidara away absently, harder than meaning to.

Deidara caught himself on the backwards stumble angrily, throwing his head back up. The motion left him dizzy. Altogether, the apprehension and the giddiness descended into a sickening pressure.

It was all he could muster to assure himself the walls were further away than they felt.

"Sasori," Deidara managed to get out. A deep cough breached the surface a breath after. Smoke trapped in his lungs freeing itself.

The dazed look in his eyes was one Itachi was familiar with. He'd seen them in his own eyes before.

On a steady hand, Itachi tipped Deidara's head up by his jaw. His eyes demanded the ally's dizzy gaze. "Did you take more than three tablets?"

"Hn." Deidara muttered honestly, holding the air he'd managed to suck back in for a moment. He stared back evenly at Itachi for an instant, before a nauseated look captured his eyes and his attention instead.

Itachi let him go with a light shove. He considered him for a moment; his being deranged enough to swallow more than three of the blue pills that had been given to him. Itachi himself had fallen into a state of pain so intense it had fogged his judgment to the point that he'd taken several as well. But Itachi's condition was critical. "The dosage is three." He reminded him seriously.

Deidara did not look up at him, thoughts still wheeling around the same dark images. "Sasori," Was the first word to touch his mouth again. The haunting scene of Sasori collapsing, having issued Deidara warning, was still imprinted on his thoughts.

"Sasori's fine." Itachi ruled out the deviation from the topic. He frowned. "The others will handle him."

"Let me out." Deidara pushed the words out, straightening his shrinking posture to get to the door again.

Itachi slid in between Deidara and the door determinedly. "No." He said simply. "Stay here."

"_Stay here," Hikaru had begged Deidara, ruffling his hair even though he knew his brother hated it._

_Deidara flit his eyes shut unhappily. "No, Hikaru."_

"_Stay."_

"_I'm not your pet."_

"_Please stay?"_

_Deidara's eyes had wandered up to his. "Fine," He'd said begrudgingly. "But this is the last time."_

_Hikaru had held onto his breath at that. If only he'd known how right he was._

"No." Deidara denied in general, slamming a fist into Itachi's chest with one hand while his memories opened up into reality again.

Itachi didn't retaliate. His thoughts were devoted to the idea of detaining Deidara. How would he do that without harming him?

When he watched Deidara, feisty and adamant, as he thumped another fist against the obstruction of his chest, he was reminded of the boy's brother. He'd last seen his brother years ago. But even in his final memory of Deidara's brother, he had acted like this. The same blue eyed temper tantrum.

Itachi tried to remember his past friendship with Hikaru as he stopped Deidara's arm mid hit. "Deidara." His eyes were scrutinizing the child; the 19 year old. He felt relatively little for Deidara as a person. But loyalty lay with Hikaru's friendship past. If roles were reversed, and Hikaru had been the one to meet Sasuke, Itachi knew what he'd have wanted his friend to do.

"You have to stay." Itachi concluded. The fight was falling like light from Deidara's eyes.

Everything had started spinning in Deidara's mind.

Itachi could see the effect of too many blue pills clouding the blonde's gaze. And his judgment.

The pills could cause one to hallucinate if overused. The proof was in Deidara's absent stare.

Itachi liked to remember the figments of his past life. Even his worst memories could prove happier than his current life, where he wandered sickly through the halls of the Akatsuki building. Fulfilling Madara's will.

Years ago, in his past life, he had had ambitions. Family. Sasuke even.

To Itachi, the worst of his past could prove a better place. The side effect of overdosing on the pills was miniscule. But to Deidara?

If what Hikaru had told Itachi about Deidara's past life was anything to go by, then Deidara's memories were a dangerous side effect to lose him to.

He watched Deidara try and gather himself, clearly caught in the struggle to cross the line between the reality of the present and how real his past felt. The realization that Deidara was in fact choking didn't enter his mind until he heard the blonde rasp for air.

"Deidara?" The name fell out of his mouth unthinkingly.

The walls were closer, Deidara's thoughts bled. Too close.

The suffocation overwhelmed him. He tried to retreat to the recesses of his mind, but it was too full to breathe there.

_Sasori's dead. Madara loves you. Madara hates you. Hikaru's gone. Itachi is controlling you. Hikaru's gone. You can't breathe. _

Deidara continued gasping for air he was sure didn't exist in the atmosphere. Somebody held onto his arms to steady him. Itachi.

"Breathe," Itachi told him, and a genuine concern flit into his eyes. He held Deidara together for a moment, feeling an odd sensation rushing through his body as they connected.

Sasuke. Well Sasuke had been smaller, and weaker. And Sasuke had possessed a sweeter tongue. A gentler charm. But this was Sasuke, all over again. This was his little brother.

His little brother, who had bound out into the first sparring match their father had come to witness.

Fugaku Uchiha had watched his two sons engage. Sasuke had loved it in the beginning. And then it had radically fallen apart.

Sasuke had landed badly. He'd collided with gravity midway into the match, and been jolted to a state of embarrassed fear he could not pull himself from. "_Breathe,"_ Itachi had told him slowly, holding his shaking arms as he tried to control the instinctive terror of having failed their father. "_Just breathe. The rest doesn't matter." _

Itachi inhaled the present, acknowledging it. Returning his focus to Deidara as he trembled in his hold. "Breathe." He said sincerely.

While Deidara concentrated on raking in air, Itachi stared hard into his slight frame.

He had seemed faster, sleeker, more capable. He had seemed competent out on the battlefield.

Here he was, a kid again. Here he was without breath in his lungs unless someone instructed him of how to put it there.

He was exactly like his older brother. Strong, but sensitive. Itachi had never seen those words converge so well except on Hikaru and Deidara.

What are you doing, Hikaru? Itachi thought somberly. And do you want me to tell him? Or is this something he shouldn't have to know?

{Y*M*M}

The expanse of the mountain swept out across his vision's scope.

Hikaru stood on unstable ground, hopping across precarious boulder work on dependable steps. The rock face he was clinging to juddered excitedly. He had animated it into a working art piece that fell under his control. Like a puppet without strings. His selected animal had been an easily ascendable snake.

Hikaru tossed the stray wisps of his golden hair back into the oncoming breeze, proceeding forwards against the elements.

The elements that weathered rock. His headband suddenly felt looser than it should have been. A moment too late, Hikaru realized it had fallen. He swiped at it in vein and the abyss below engulfed it. It didn't really belong on his forehead anyway.

Once a Hidden Stone ninja, once a rogue. Now a nothing.

Hikaru had slit so many anti lines across the head protector, that it probably offered feeble protection anyway.

The nearby crack of a broken stick rebounded across the emptiness. Hikaru whipped his body back, pressing tightly into the contours of his rock snake. It was the second legion sent to find him approaching. The Kumori were dead set on him.

Hikaru toyed with the idea of murdering them all. It would be slaughter.

He could kill them from there. He could animate the ground with a whispered jutsu and send all the rocks of the surrounding mountains crashing down on them in the angry forms of snakes and eagles.

The mental image appealed to his restless hands. But not to his better judgment.

Hikaru cooed reassuringly to his elemental rock snake to steady it's nerves. His creations had been born for slaughter. They would always disagree with him on this. Instinct was stronger than rationality.

"He's fallen." One of the Kumori's voices resonated, trapped between the mountain's arms that enclosed them. He was staring over the edge of the gulf.

"He's Hikaru." Another put forth as a solid argument. Which was true, how many Hidden Stone ninja fell off rock faces when they possessed the ability to change them?

Hikaru opened and shut his hand around the handle of a kunai to occupy himself. His snake heaved impatiently.

"I don't get this chase." One of the Kumori was saying, brushing sand and leaves from his black streamlined shirt. "Chances are he's anywhere."

"Not anywhere." The first Kumori took him up on it. "Predictable bastard. He's roosting in the trees of this mountain. We know that. This is his safe place."

The mountain. The largest rock collection known to Hikaru would always be his safe place.

"What I don't get is why we're bothering." A third ninja ventured. "With this guy. What about just laying hands on his brother?"

"His brother will come." The first sniped, a smile etching onto his face. He kicked a stone aside. "Deidara. Kid's still first prize."

"Kinda wasteful to sell the brat out, just for Hikaru's mistakes. Kid was alright."

"Kid was pretty." Another added his input.

The first Kumori spat out laughter. "We won't let him go to waste," He assured the others with a twisted smile. "He was pretty. I'd fuck him before handing him to the higher ups."

The other two were on the verge of responding, when their eyes suddenly flicked up wildly.

The first ninja turned his smiling head around just in time. To see the enormous snake of rock that came crashing down.

After the shudder of collision fell a grating silence.

{Y*M*M}

Deidara stirred from sleep on a determined breath. His eyes fluttered open against the glare of fluorescents.

The hospital bed was alone behind its drapery. He could see no further than the overhanging white of the curtain that secluded him. The last time he'd been here had been to hide himself with his pills, from Itachi's view. Now he felt sure he was hiding himself from everything.

A weight shifted at the foot of his bed. Deidara forced his gaze in its direction and stopped to acknowledge the presence.

Madara sat on the bottom edge of his bedside. The sight of him sunk Deidara's stomach inside itself and he pulled his mouth open without any real intention of speaking.

"You're awake now?" Madara asked him tonelessly, sliding up closer until he was at Deidara's head. He placed his hand against Deidara's face, where blonde hair had fallen across his eyes. "How did you sleep?"

The closeness of unwanted body heat stifled Deidara. The sensation of choking rang through him again. Madara detected the struggle on his face and shifted an inch away again. He sighed slowly. "Recover, it's just shock you're feeling."

Intensely, Deidara mused wearily. He could feel his heartbeat drumming at Madara's proximity. But his eyes remained half closed despite his desire to stay alert.

Madara's gaze drifted up along the pipe connecting Deidara's arm to the anesthetic pump. He pitied his falling eyelids enough to turn the supply up.

Clear blue liquid accelerated through the pipe way. Deidara winced as the liquid found his body.

"It will only take effect in twenty minutes or so." Madara advised him, still unexpectedly calm.

He moved his hand towards the streams of Deidara's hair that had strayed out of place.

As he did, Deidara flinched. He had not expected a gesture without duplicity from his leader. It took him a full minute of holding his breath to realize that he was in no risk of the usual advancement. Madara stroked his hair back without any indication of lust.

His touch would never be soothing. But a dull warmth resided on Deidara from the comfort of human contact.

'_I don't have twenty minutes,' _Deidara remembered suddenly. He barely managed to lift his head up. "What about Sasori?"

His first words were rusty. Madara strained to catch them.

"Sasori is alive." He said at last. "He's in a separate ward."

"Which ward?"

Madara stared back into his hardened gaze. "The…operating ward."

Deidara's speech retreated. He processed the idea in his clouded mind.

So Sasori had been in trouble. Deidara stayed still enough to halt the conversation between Madara and himself. Thought infiltrated the brief silence.

Where was Itachi now? Why was Madara here? His latest memories reformed in his fractured mind, promoting him to want to get up and into the world again.

He tried to gather the energy to pick himself up while Madara revived the deadened conversation.

"You'll need a new partner, by the way. Temporarily," He inserted before Deidara's shocked eyes could lay waste to the idea. "And I've assigned you to Itachi's team. You will fight with him if you receive a mission. Kisame may join you later…but for the time, he's already been assigned an ongoing mission that will consume most of his days' hours. I expect this suits you better than going in alone?" Madara did not mention that Itachi was a prospective body guard for Deidara. He didn't mention that he'd planned in careful precision for Deidara to be in the safest place possible should another enemy strike for him. He didn't bring up the fact that out of the Akatsuki, no one but for Itachi would resign themselves to taking on the youngest member.

Deidara blinked back his surprise. "I guess…"

"And your room is out of bounds. " Madara continued conveying the bulk of the situation. "You'll be residing with Itachi as well, in the meanwhile. I would have you stay with me, but…that would raise questions." Madara absorbed Deidara's blatant astonishment. "I've put a spare key for Itachi's room in your robe, already." The black and red garment waited patiently, slung over the foot of the bed. "He knows of the arrangement."

"Why is my room..?"

"Shh, Deidara. No use telling you everything now, you're half asleep."

Deidara felt otherwise.

The weight of the blue drugs had wavered since sleeping so that thought made sense again. His body's response was somewhat more acute. Deidara shifted his weight into sitting upright. Pointedly, Madara pushed lightly against his chest to reverse the motion. He insisted he stay in a small mouthful of words. Deidara's eyes struck his.

"What's up here?" Deidara wanted to know suddenly, his patience frayed. "What's happened?"

Madara refrained from answering for an instant. The wheels behind the mask were grinding to find a response for him.

"What happened?" Deidara repeated unswervingly. "Who attacked us?"

Madara was hesitant to answer his questions. He didn't have a clear conscious on the matters. "Well, our enemies of course." He put forth simply out of the obligation to answer. "You know how enemies take any opportunity."

{Y*M*M}

"Orochimaru," Kabuto said as he crossed the dimly lit chamber.

The citrine eyes of his superior slid from his page to him. "What is it Kabuto?" A white snake twisted up the foot of the desk just then, weaving its wet body until it had reached Orochimaru's work space. The paperwork was tossed down next to it.

The sound of Kabuto's footsteps faded as he reached the desk. "There's been word from the Kumori again."

"Oh?" He spoke with only the faintest indication of interest, extending his arm to the slithering creature approaching. In a movement of streamlined white, the snake began to bind to his offering.

Kabuto's eyes dragged after the snake's slow twining movement. "They want you to consider them."

"For what?"

Already, the snake had settled tightly and neatly on the snake lord's arm. Kabuto took his gaze from it. "For war."

The notion appealed to Orochimaru, whose eyes immediately revealed his curiosity. "They want us to align with them?"

"Yes. They need an ally."

"Ha." Orochimaru tipped his head back on a breath of eccentric laughter. The snake tensed to keep its grip. "You mean they need our help to survive? Because they were impulsive? Because their leader is a reckless child without regard for consequence?" Kabuto fell silent through the duration of his passage. Orochimaru snorted contemptuously before finishing it. "Foolish, and arrogant of them, wouldn't you say?"

"Who's the war aimed at? Sasuke's voice rose to meet the stale air, cold but deliberate. He came sweeping in with his white shirt blowing against his forward motion.

Orochimaru's smile extended. "Tell him Kabuto." Orochimaru leaned down to retrieve his work page, abandoning the confused expression of his henchman. Kabuto followed through regardless of his insufficient understanding.

"The Kumori want to bring down the Akatsuki."

"Akatsuki?" Sasuke repeated on a tenor he hadn't meant to sound especially curious. "Why the Akatsuki?"

"Because of Hikaru." Kabuto said, elaborating at Sasuke's incomprehensive stare with the words, "He's the rogue ninja of the Hidden Stone."

Sasuke remained quiet. Questions accumulated behind his dark eyes.

"He's like the Itachi," Orochimaru interrupted the conversation idly, "Of the Hidden Stone. Except he didn't betray his village. His village betrayed him."

"His name is Hikaru?"

"Hikaru. Yes. He's the rock molding artist. He left at 18, I think it was…"

"So what did he do to them?"

"The Kumori?" Orcochimaru's face brightened on a twisted smile. "Well, he joined them."

Sasuke lingered on the information. His tolerance was thinning as he struggled to digest it. "What exactly does that mean, Orochimaru?"

A dark laugh escaped their leader's throat. "It means once a betrayer, always a betrayer. Hikaru betrayed the Kumori he'd joined up with years ago, just recently." Orochimaru rose and squared up to Sasuke. "He broke their deal."

"What deal?"

"He fled their ranks."

"What does that mean?" Sasuke stressed the words irritably, verging on anger.

Orochimaru's cunning eyes assessed him. Always experimenting, always wondering how far he could push something before he reached its limits. "Hikaru swore to them he'd join their ranks. In return, they would not seek his brother."

The word brother lit the light Orochimaru had predicted in Sasuke's eyes. He tried to keep his words even. "Why?"

"Well it's a bloodline limit they're seeking, isn't it?

Sasuke paused to speculate. He formulated his question around the largest concern."So they have his brother captive?"

"No they don't." Orichimaru said elatedly. His snake raised its head, perturbed by the commotion of noise and movement. Its tongue flicked stiffly at the air.

The next expected question was given time to find the conversation. But Sasuke figured it out too quickly. "The Akatsuki does?"

"Ooh, clever boy."

"The Akatsuki has him," The idea shifted around Sasuke's head until he found the missing pieces of it. "Which one of the Akatsuki is he?"

"Deidara." Orochimaru freed the name carelessly. His smile resided. "Didn't think he was worth waging war over, did you?"

Sasuke sniffed the air, bringing his hand up over his shoulder to rest casually. "Don't think any of them were, honestly."

Orochimaru passed his complicated smile over to Kabuto. His henchman shuddered at its implications. Sasuke was not the only one ignorant.

"So naturally, you can tell them yes, Kabuto." The henchman started as Orochimaru addressed him. The statement rung in his ears.

"I'm…sorry?" Kabuto stammered unsurely.

"Why yes?" Sasuke added his enquiry.

A fateful smile dragged itself onto Orochimaru's pale face. "Such doubt, in your eyes, both of you."

"Why, yes?" Sasuke echoed himself demandingly.

It only spurred a wider smile from his superior. "Sasuke. Kabuto. Who are we to turn down opportunities to destroy our enemies?"

"To destroy the Akatsuki?" Kabuto confirmed for them all.

"Correct."

"With the Kumori's help?" Sasuke added in clear disgust.

"Correct, again. Their leader may be lacking sensibility, but not the power to back even the worst of decisions. If I had access to his legion…even only through alliance…"

"That's not the point."

Orochimaru stared out levelly at Sasuke.

He went on undeterred. "I want to kill him."

"I know." Their thoughts flew to the same man. There was only one individual Sasuke brought up at any one time anyway.

"Don't get in my way." Sasuke pursued, the image of Itachi Uchiha clarifying in the nearest reaches of his mind. "Don't you, or the Kumori, or anyone else get in my way of him."

"We won't, Sasuke."

"I'm not doubting you won't." Sasuke's hand fell against his sword absent mindedly. "Because you value life, Orochimaru. Isn't that why immortality is so important to you?"

The smile on his face collapsed into a grimace. "Oh, Sasuke," He heaved the words. "You are such a pleasant addition to the family." He suddenly snorted in interest, looking back at him. "Our interests converge, you know." He identified the common enemy and regarded Sasuke capable enough to do the same. His smirk replaced itself. "Isn't that why you've come here. Sasuke? Away from your village, away from your friends? You had what you loved. And you have chosen what you hate instead. If the death of your brother is all that you're after, then I'm happy to give that to you." His eyes shimmered with deeper understanding. "But you need to dream bigger."

{Y*M*M}

"_Don't let them scare you."_

Hikaru's words were timeless things, that always sought the most inopportune of moments to present themselves.

Why they came at all, when Deidara had ascertained himself he would not be listening to his brother's words ever again, was anyone's wonder.

Deidara heeded them anyway as he approached the concealed doorway.

The steel handle of the operating room was bitingly cold as Deidara pushed inside.

He found himself stepping inwards haltingly, his senses consumed by the dark scene that met him.

The towering frame of Kakuzu, his attention summoned at the sound of Deidara's entrance, was stunting. Their gazes locked.

Kakuzu had blood trailing thickly off his outstretched hands. He had the tempered look of a physician in his glinting gaze. Kakuzu had performed the operation on Sasori then, and only recently.

An unutterable sickness rocked Deidara.

"It's okay, it's over already." Kakuzu informed him, maintaining eye level.

Deidara recovered himself immediately, regaining his posture. He tried not to let shuddering impede his smug manner of speaking. "Oh yeah. Will he make it without all that..?" He couldn't muster the word 'blood' to his lips.

Kakuzu made no effort to wipe it off, extracting himself from Sasori's bedside fully bloodied. The puppet master had suffered severe battle damage to his arms and midriff, and had required a vast number of stitches to repair the flesh. That deed was accomplished now. Kakuzu had just sown the last thread that strung Sasori into a whole again when Deidara had intruded.

His presence was drunk in by Kakuzu, who felt a vague resent towards the youngest Akatsuki member ever since Madara's meeting about him. He cleared his response of vehemence. "I'm sure he'll live."

Deidara tried to feign bravery. His usual cocky voice was bordering on ridiculous, so he tried his hand at the less frequented mature approach. "How bad is he?"

Kakuzu shrugged, a flicker of doubt crossing his stare. "Bad enough." He said coolly. Something implicit weaved into his words, "Why? Want me to kill him?"

"_I hope he does die…Itachi Uchiha is one breath away from his last, so I hope that instead of pain, he finds death."_

Deidara's own words jarred him from within the memory. He swallowed the setback. "No. Just wonderin'."

Kakuzu didn't accept the answer. He dug him for more. "You sure? Cos he's in a world of pain, ya know. He could be crying here for days. You sure you don't wanna…"

"I'm sure, you fucking idiot." Deidara's temper reared its head. Kakuzu glared back at it with restraint, which only flared the flames. "If you got problems with me, say it out loud!"

The spark of his amplified voice ignited in the atmosphere. Tension made itself known to them both.

"Excuse me?" Kakuzu allowed him room for appeal.

Deidara's thoughts were acid.

"I can see it in your face, Kakuzu. You think this is my fault." The fear of the unknown washed over Deidara, because he didn't understand what part he played in this outcome."How the fuck is this my fault?"

He realized the minute the yell had escaped him. It had been on the last wave of energy his body possessed for the moment. Twenty minutes had accumulated, since Madara had turned the anesthetic supply up. He could feel it in his veins, draining all sensations of life away at a gradual incessancy.

But it was too late to tell Kakuzu that.

Just as quick to throw lightening, Kakuzu rushed Deidara.

The light of the machine Sasori was hooked up to blinked steadily in the background as the two allies clashed. Sasori remained unaware, lost to darkness of his dreams. As Kakuzu's hands carried his blood to Deidara's throat.

No one saw Kakuzu slam Deidara into the wall side, where his teeth clashed together with painful suddenness and his eyes pierced shut against the force.

Sasori's crimson blood drew lines down his neck as Kakuzu trapped him there with bloodied hands.

Deidara spat his mouth open, devoid of the air he was seeking. His mind was churning rage and insults faster than he could spit them out at Kakuzu. "You dumb fuck! Get away from me!" Strangled sounds.

Kakuzu's eyes shifted darkly. "You're not worth the noise you make, Deidara."

A liquid cold ran through Deidara. He could feel his body strength fading into the numbness of the anesthetic. A miserable relief set in his eyes.

Kakuzu could not be physically deflected. Words were all he had left, as Sasori's blood slid down under his chin.

"I'm sick of you. I'm sick of protecting you." Kakuzu said, in unfathomable implication. Deidara listened dazedly as the man assaulting him spoke as though a guardian. "We all are. And your fucked up little illusion has gotten to about as much, as I can take. We are not your friends, Deidara. You and I share an agreement. It's victory. Don't talk back, don't fuck up, and don't tell me what to do." Kakuzu realized Deidara wasn't moving, but hadn't worked out why. He took his stillness for fear and shoved him free out of the obligation to. It wasn't his intention to bully.

Deidara slid to the ground in a simple folding of his black robe. He pulled in a breath, dizzied by the nauseating sensation of Sasori's blood at his throat. A choking smell like metal wafted up from it.

Kakuzu peered back into Deidara's disorientated eyes for a guilty moment. When nothing came from his usually arrogant ally, he added coldly, "Then again, it's not your fault." He went to take his robe from Sasori's bedside, where he'd been keeping it whilst operating. The worst of Sasori's blood had been transferred from his skin to Deidara's already and didn't leave any marks. He pinned his sight to Deidara one last time before muttering, "You're too young for this."

Hatred wrapped around Deidara's every mindful thought. But he could bring none of them to the ready while he still fought for air.

Kakuzu stepped out of the room disregarding of him, letting the door knock shut behind his exit.

All the small sounds amplified in the silence that followed. The bleep of the life machine. The ticking of a clock. The rhythm of Sasori's breathing.

Deidara's hand drew sluggishly up towards his neck, where the blood was drying. There was enough of it to leave a dark sheen across the lightest brush from his fingertips. Deidara felt himself blanch from the drain of knowing he was covered in it. His friend's blood. Sasori's blood was on his hands.

He allowed passage for the anesthetic to return his body to him. It took several dull minutes before he could feel his pulse again, however vague through the thickness of his deadened touch.

Clear thought was impossible. Kakuzu's words were rebounding in his head but unable to carry meaning.

Then in eventual desperation, Deidara picked himself up. It had been forty minutes. He felt better, as he was reacquainted with the ability to move at will again. Only the pain had swum into reach with it.

In blurry concentration, Deidara navigated to his reason for coming here. The room's only bed was occupied by him. Sasori's white sheet was covering his chest, veiling his injury from view. But Deidara could envision it, in piercing clarity, all the same.

He needed to rinse himself. The odor the blood let off was beginning to overwhelm his reforming senses. He had to wash somewhere. Deidara moved for the door, feeling blindsided the minute he'd stepped outside.

Shower where? His room had been forbidden for some reason. The only room he was permitted to now, would be…

Itachi's. Deidara clenched his teeth in bitter acknowledgement. Itachi's room was not off limits. He could go there; it was just down the hall from his old room. It was closer than his old room even.

But he didn't want to invade it. He didn't want to see Itachi's room from the inside. What lay within his private walls? Was it just filled to its capacity in broken furniture, smashed glass, shattered objects? Was it the embodiment of his night's pain and his frustrations?

Deidara recalled the crash of a fallen object from a few nights earlier; something being broken in Itachi's misery. He connected it to the familiar image of Itachi when he was in pain, wandering off the battle field. Without a single scratch on him from fighting. But spluttering blood out onto his sleeve. The enemy was inside him.

Without direction, Deidara moved forwards. He managed to find Itachi's room after a series of unwilling footfalls. He sucked in his pride and keyed the room open.

It was to his unvoiced astonishment that the place was neat and ordinary, surprisingly devoid of broken objects. Vacant but for the meticulously arranged furniture. The colors weren't even very threatening: most of the room was a faded maroon with patches of clear white and dark reds to introduce contrast.

There were no corpses or voodoo dolls or bloodstained carpets.

Deidara edged inside as though the real Itachi's room might spring on him at any moment. But nothing did, and he begrudged himself for the childish perception.

He called out the name of the person he least wanted to see reluctantly. "Itachi?"

No answer came for him. Noting that he wasn't in the bedroom area that the entrance had opened him into, Deidara took the initiative to examine the bathroom. It was the only other room the bedroom attached to. And it was empty.

Feeling desolate in a room that wasn't his own, Deidara went back inside to the main room, where the bed was stationed. It was a crimson colored double bed, which pricked at Deidara. How come Itachi got a lavish double bed? All he and Sasori ever got had been your custom single.

Turning away from the upsetting thought, Deidara noticed Itachi's bed stand. A thin pile of papers was resting on it, evidently detailed in mission specifics penned in Madara's writing. Aside from that, a familiar bottle. A bottle filled with stark blue, that jarred you in the otherwise organized color scheme of a room that did not incorporate such a color.

Deidara picked the pills up like they belonged to him. He hadn't realized how quick he was to choose nothingness over the pain of conscious. He poured three pills into his hands, then dropped the bottle down clumsily. A few pills spewed onto the end table, and while Deidara recovered the fallen bottle, he did nothing to recollect the fallen contents. He was absorbed in the task of taking his own few, veering into the bathroom to find a water source. The pills washed down before he could regret taking anything over and above the already intoxicating anesthetic. How long before the first pain killer wore off him, he wondered.

As an act of courtesy, Deidara decided to wait for Itachi's return to get permission for showering. In the time frame, he argued inwardly about whether that was child like or not. Eventually the conflict subsided to an intolerable edginess, that brought him to the bathroom without Itachi's word for it. Itachi would just grant him permission, anyway. These were Madara's new assigned orders, not either of theirs.

The shower spat its fountain alertly at the first indication Deidara gave it. The water began to heat itself within the boundaries of its glass fortress, a pretty sound that left the glass misty and the air warm.

Deidara could still feel Sasori's blood sticking, and tried to dismiss the discomfort of it as he dashed his Akatsuki robe's zipper down. He slid his hair loose and clamped the hair band between his teeth while he fussed to get his hair away from his face. It fell at his back in one neat curtain.

When he'd entered the shower chamber, a sense of tranquility brought his thoughts into the clear again. He reflected back on Kakuzu's brash reaction to him. He revisited the words that haunted him most.

"_Your illusion."_

The water trickle clashed in the otherwise empty quiet. Deidara tried to position himself as close to the source of water flow as he was able, desperate to get the blood from his skin. He stood up taller just to get it to the shower head at some point, sincerely averse to carrying his friend's blood on his neck. Sasori. Is this mine to carry somehow?

Deidara flicked his hair back, angling it away from the water's spray. He watched as most of the blood trailed down along his body, riding the water off him. He realized how much there was. Some of it still left on his hand.

A sudden pang interrupted the motion of his thoughts. He put the bloodied hand to his forehead, correcting his balance. When that didn't deter the dizziness, he moved that hand across to the shower door for support.

A mark of blood stained the glass in the shape of his palm. Deidara felt the world grow fainter.

What was wrong with him? What was happening?

His hand slid down the glass door in a streak of blood.

A dimmer version of the room replaced the one he had been standing in.

The shower choked on water for a second, before the flow continued as normal. Then it cut out. Deidara realized he had his free hand pressed to the lever for water supply too late to be bothered stopping himself. He could not discern this headache from the others. Was this the anesthetic? Was this the pills?

Or was this both?

Deidara slid to the floor of the shower, still too clouded by the residual steam to feel the cold of his naked body against the rest of the air. He sat perfectly still trying to regain himself. But he couldn't feel anything.

It was beyond the room that the bedroom door slipped quietly open, and then shut again, granting Itachi admission. He had such a soundless tread, that Deidara knew nothing of his arrival. The bathroom door divided them. Itachi could not hear Deidara breathing on the other side; it had fallen short of inaudible in his stifling pain.

Still caught up in thought from his argument with Madara, Itachi crossed the room blindly, missing the strewn pill bottle. Missing the slight imprint on the bed from where Deidara had sat up waiting for him.

His throat was dry from arguing a point Madara was in complete denial of. He pressed his hand to his tired eyes for a moment's blinking, before turning himself towards the bathroom door.

All he raked in was the sight of Deidara's fetal figure. And with unavoidable notice, the alarming blood mark on the shower door.

His instincts took him forward, into the worrying sight of someone grounded in the presence of a bloodstain.

"Deidara…" Itachi met his fogged eyes with concern, entering the shower and freeing its warm mist in a single plume. "What happened?"

Deidara could not locate his tongue, but he knew how much use he'd have for it if he ever did. He wanted to tell him he was fine, but the words were adamant about not leaving his headspace. Which probably meant that he wasn't fine. Deidara choked on his irritation, up until the weight of his headache consumed his focus again.

Itachi watched him withdraw, making an unsettled sound that rung with anguish. He immediately touched his face. "Deidara." His hands found the blood that hadn't washed away yet in a calm sort of horror. He slunk his hand down to Deidara's neck. "You're bleeding."

"_Not my blood,"_ Deidara tried to surface from his mind with. But the pain was surreal. "_It's not my blood! I'm okay."_

Itachi drew Deidara into his arms again, not for the first time. He couldn't hear any part of Deidara except for his labored breathing, as he walked Deidara's fragile shape into the bedroom. The kid's skin was still hot from the shower water. Itachi seemed to realize a moment too late that Deidara was uncovered. He lay him down on the bed sensibly before pulling a sheet across him.

Deidara had not noticed especially in his haze of conscious. Everything had blurred together and become one for him: breathing, thinking, listening, seeing. And none of it really mattered above the pain.

Itachi stared him down through the duration of his wordless shivering. It was like he was trapped, on the other side of the same world. Fighting to get back.

Itachi wondered about his supposed blood wounds for a moment. He contemplated aiding him, casting his eyes over the room for resources. His gaze double took the stray pills outside their containing bottle.

He maneuvered off from next to Deidara and went round the bed to claim the bottle. Deidara had ingested some.

"How many?" He asked absently, streaking his eyes to Deidara with a slight exasperation for the stupidity.

Deidara could not make out his words. They distorted in the passage leading up to his world, resounding as hollow and meaningless in his head.

Itachi set the bottle down between the fallen scatter of blue pills with a sigh. Deidara was on a potent anesthetic of note. If he took anything that might contravene with it, he posed a risk to himself.

He was seriously ignorant, especially for an Akatsuki. What had Hikaru called him a prodigy for? If he did not know the basics of even himself, then what did he know?

He was playing a child in an adult's world. Running through fires instead of going round them.

Like Sasuke, Itachi had to remind himself fittingly. Sasuke behaved in a similar manner to Deidara; wanting to do everything without first knowing everything. So set on believing in themselves since their brothers had taught them in their betrayals: that you could believe in no one else.

"Gah," Deidara mumbled words suddenly. Itachi tipped his head back at the incoherent things.

"Deidara?"

"Can't…"

"Can't what?"

Deidara kept his eyes closed, trying to stabilize a body that had overdosed. "Can't find you… Ru…"

Itachi blinked on the words, deciding they must not be meant for him. Deidara was entitled to hallucination. The blue pills were liars of the highest order.

"Ru." Deidara dragged the word out like it meant something significant. And just maybe it did, in his headspace. Perhaps it was merely translating to gibberish on the open air.

Itachi paused for a moment, drawing something from the word for an instant as Deidara muttered it one last time. It had a familiar quality to it. Deidara was using it like a call, which linked the name to a person…

"Hikaru." Itachi said abruptly, creasing into a frown at the idea. It brought him to his own memories past. One where Hikaru had been sleeping, muttering about a certain 'Dei.' And Itachi had squandered several minutes of his life there too, trying to work out who that was. "You two are sickening."

Just maybe they'd only ever had each other for so long, that they were all the other one had for memories. Itachi saw that viable.

If only it wasn't a weakness, Itachi might have been willing to empathize.

Itachi moved closer to where Deidara lay, staring down into his deplorable shivering. Some Akatsuki.

You're still someone's baby brother, I guess. He thought to himself as a final favor to Hikaru.

Itachi tried to remember the idea as he sat back down beside him.

{Y*M*M}

Sasuke's eyes flashed up at the darkening sky. However high the moon climbed and however far the stars projected, night had a foreboding appeal to it. Something the vague attempts at light could never succeed in warding off.

He rested his hand on his sword hilt, gazing out without really looking at anything. He'd seen the skyline a thousand times from this point on the lair's rooftop. He knew what to expect.

A rustle from his far side perked his attention instantly. Sasuke spun himself round with complete readiness, slowly bringing his sword up in front of him whilst keeping his sight on the surrounding trees.

Any amateur would know better than to goad him. He'd need nothing more than an opportunity to end your life.

Sasuke felt the presence drift, until he wondered if he was being paranoid. He stood himself upright again, lowering his sword to his waist.

He felt the force of two rocks crushing him from either side before he could retaliate. The air was forced from him with unfair quickness, and the cold stone kept him brutally wedged where he had been standing. His sword had shot out from his hand and clattered to the stone floor on impact.

"You're trapped." A voice not especially terrifying mentioned to him.

Sasuke scanned as far as his eyes could reach with fury, gasping to compel oxygen into his lungs every so often. The pressure of the rocks on either side of him intensified. A hiss penetrated the sky above him. Sasuke threw his head up at it, and caught the prominent glint of life in the eyes of a rock body leaning over him. This thing was snake.

Sasuke raised his question the moment he had breath to. "You strike…at night…coward?"

The unamused face of a blonde haired, blue eyed man dropped before him with considerable dignity. He elevated himself up to full height before uttering a word. "I'm feeling less than humorous." He admitted unreservedly. A tail of blonde hair flickered out behind him in the night wind, blanched in the moonlight.

Sasuke paused a second, focusing on detaining air where he needed it. The realization struck him. Even though he had only just learnt of this person.

"You're the…Rock bitch. Aren't you? The…rogue brother." He used every word in his range before stumbling onto a recall of the man's name again. "Hika…"

One merciless punch of the snake's tail sent Sasuke's thoughts into orbit, his stomach sending the pain up like electricity in waves until it had reached his mind. He coughed blood splatters onto the ground in front of him. His black eyes came up like endless nights.

"Get bent." Sasuke hissed through heavy breaths, spitting blood off to his side again.

Hikaru came around to the front of him. He leant down without regard for the space barrier and stuck his face in Sasuke's.

"Sasuke."

His opponent withdrew at the proximity of the sound, trying to avert his face from him.

"Why're you here?" Sasuke demanded furiously. He received little more than disinterested eyes for the question. Then dismissal.

"Sasuke, you are the brother then. Of Itachi. Of Uchiha Itachi, the Sharigan wielder from…"  
"I know who Itachi is." Sasuke said loudly, wresting against the hold of the rocks. "Let me out."

"You know him well enough to know his weakness then, don't you?" Hikaru's eyes touched the frantic sight of Sasuke's body language without empathy. "I need you to find him for me."

"Are you…kidding me?"

"And I need you to kill him." Hikaru smiled a little. He tapped Sasuke's jaw up to keep it closed before he could speak again. "Or die trying." He added.

Sasuke ripped his head away, thrusting it back towards Hikaru on the words, "You want me to kill the same man I've been trying to kill my whole life. Of course I'll be doing that!"

Hikaru's smile shifted, caught in his eyes this time. He touched Sasuke's face because it looked angry enough to offer warmth. "You're sure you understand the question?"

"Get off of me. I'm not listening to you."

"And yet you're answering."

"Why do you want Itachi dead? What's it to you?"

Hikaru's gaze suddenly looked something tragic. He locked it to the ground the second the idea came for him. "Itachi is…" He broke off and trailed away without warning.

Sasuke glared and tried to work the rest out. "A bad brother?" He estimated at random. "Because where's your brother? How's he doing? Do you have _any_ idea what you've done to him?" The message entered Hikaru's tunneling eyes with a sense of recognition. Sasuke thought of himself, out in the dark night, alone in the silence. Trying to hate Itachi for discarding him there in the first place. "Left him to this life. Of war, of hate, of fighting. It's hell! Do you know what you've _done_ to us!" The plural slipped in. Sasuke didn't bother catch it. His unvoiced hatred for Itachi caught in his sentences, emanating on the currents of the night air.

Hikaru stared at it, speculating. He swiped at his face as though he could wipe the poignant look from his eyes. "You're still young." He told Sasuke at last. "What do you know?" His words fell short as Sasuke's spit landed. The blood stain hit Hikaru's face in undiluted outrage.

"Enough." Sasuke said to him. "I know enough to understand your kind."

Hikaru scoffed lightly, unfamiliar amusement striking his eyes for the first time in many nights. "I was afraid you'd be like Itachi, when I first thought of finding you. No humor."

He made a motion only the snakes of rock detected, making them unwind from Sasuke. He drew in air the instant they'd relieved him of their weight.

Hikaru leant over Sasuke's crouching figure arrogantly. "And yet here you are, talking about my brother like you know the half of it." His eyes steeped in darkness. "What a joke."

{Y*M*M}

"_Deidara?" A breath of wind had been his only reply. Hikaru had grown worried, stepping into the household. "Deidara? Where are you, Dei?"_

"_Hiku," Deidara had said, struggling to complete the name in his meek voice. "Ru…"_

"_Dei!" Hikaru had bound up to him. He'd fallen down at his side the moment he found him. Wrapped up in blankets, his sapphire eyes bluer than usual behind the tears. "Dei, what happened to you?"_

_Deidara didn't have words for him. He'd just kept hiccupping on tears as he'd buried his head into Hikaru, trying to forget the pain there. His small gown carelessly tied back onto his body. The little stone bird Hikaru had made for him watching quietly from beside them. _

"_Deidara! Talk to me! What happened, Deidara?"_

_Everything in Deidara's world was a little bit too hazy to say for sure. But he'd discerned his brother's voice in clarity. "Ru." Was all he had for his brother, since it was all he cared about. _

_For the moment, Hikaru clung to his sibling. He tried to keep the safety aspect he stood for ahead of the fighting aspect. But whoever had done this was dead. _

_Blood wound down from Deidara's young legs as he rose to take after Hikaru. He'd stumbled to his knees again with a pained gasp. "Wait Ru…"_

"_Dei, I'll be right back. I'm coming for you. Stay here." The hatred in Hikaru's voice had been evident. He'd crossed for the door in a wave of sincere loathing._

"_Ru!" Deidara had begged on a broken cry, halting him._

_Hikaru had touched his hair, brushed it back behind his ears. "Rest, Dei. I'll be right back for you, I need to find him first. Before he goes…"_

"_Stay."_

_Hikaru retrieved the stone bird Deidara had next to him, slipping it into his hands even though they trembled, unable to find purchase on it. "Hold this, Dei." He whispered affectionately, shaking with the desire to find and kill the man escaping. "Hold this, it's okay. Just wait for me. I'm coming. Alright, I'll come get you."_

_Deidara's mouth fell open but said nothing as he held the bird. It was always calming to some degree._

_Hikaru pet his head, and disappeared at a dash, leaving him in his wake. Panic seized Deidara at the suddenness of it. "Ru!"_

_A horrible wave of loneliness rode through his body. He tried to think of all the things he hadn't said yet. "I wanna follow you, Ru!" Deidara shared with the sweeping wind. His disarrayed gown_ _hung on his shoulders,_ _letting the draft in with carelessness. "Please, he…He looks for you, Ru, but I lie! I say I can't find you!"_ _Deidara felt his young vocal chords take strain from all the screaming. He looked up spell bound. "I can't find you, Ru…"_

_And no matter what they'd done to Deidara, he had maintained his brother's lie. He'd told his enemies that he had no idea where Hikaru had been. Even though he always did. He'd always asked him before his leaving._

_Deidara had sat in a pretty mess in the family estate, with nothing but a bird of stone to remind him that his brother loved him. And his own blood to remind Hikaru he had loved him the same. _

{Y*M*M}

Don't let this chapter confuse you. It's all going to make sense soon, I promise!

If you have any real questions concerning something, ask me and I'll try clear it up for you.

In case you didn't read the chapter before this: Hikaru does not exist, I made him up, along with the Kumori. Please read the first Chapter's description for further info!

And please, comment! I need the feedback…it's how I'll get better!~

~AfterForev3R

P.S. Updates might be slower on this Story sometimes, because Chapters are longer. Bear with me~


	3. Chapter 3: Fragments

Chapter Three

Fragments

~You Made Me

{Y*M*M}

"_The worst thing you can try to do is cling to something that is gone, or to recreate it."_  
Johnette Napolitano

{Y*M*M}

Deidara woke to find Hidan's conflicting expression of surprise and amusement.

"Nice." He said at last, smirking.

Deiara was ready to enquire, as he blinked his eyes open properly. "What're you talking…" The cold morning breeze knocked against his exposed body. Third Akatsuki to see him naked. The bed sheet lashed up across his body in one furious movement. "Don't, stare! You perverted prick!"

Hidan giggled stupidly, turning out the door. "You're not just pretty on the inside." He taunted as he left the room, calling back, "By the way, Madara wants you in his office." He couldn't resist tacking on, "I can see why."

"The fuck am I?" Deidara blurted out, before recalling that he was in Itachi's room. A much more alarming question marked its presence. How had he gotten to Itachi's bed? The last thing he'd remembered had been feeling faint in the shower, and then…

Deidara jumped as Itachi came sauntering out of the same bathroom that had started this nightmare.

"The fuck'd you…"

"I did nothing but help you." Itachi said sharply, and Deidara paused to listen. "You were passing out. I thought you were bleeding. You were in my shower, so I brought you here. Then you woke up and started yelling."

"Don't lie to me." Deidara said, in a voice that made it sound as though he was way too attractive to pass up taking advantage of. "You were doing weird things while I slept."

"No, you were doing weird things while you slept."

Deidara's mouth popped open in protest. But he could hardly vouch for it. Itachi didn't bring up his mutterings of Hikaru, the long lost brother episode the night had turned into.

"Okay, well, tell me why you didn't cover me."

"Would you have liked me to dress you?"

"Well you could've thrown me a blanket, hn!"

"You kicked that off in your…violent sleep, or whatever."

"And you just thought, fuck it then."

Itachi grew intolerant. He came right up to where Deidara lay, startling him. But he was only looking for the paperwork at his bed side table. "Tell me again, why you were bleeding in my shower when I got here?"

"Madara said…"

"I know. You're gonna live here. The blood, was the actual focus there…" Itachi felt breathless already. Like addressing a helpless child.

"That wasn't my blood! It was Sasori's blood! I tried'a tell you, but you just…"

A bang rattled out in the hallway, breaking the discussion. Hidan's voice rung out impatiently. "Hello! I'm waiting to take you to Madara's office!"

"To take me?" Deidara repeated quizzically, shooting Itachi an expecting glare. "But I'm a fucking grown up!"

"Well now. Don't overstate yourself." Itachi murmured quietly.

Deidara was fuming. "Great, so I need an escort. And a fucking commentary crew. Can I get my robe? Where the fuck is that?"

"Would you stop swearing? It's not even seven yet." Itachi asked as the consistent profanity pierced him.

Deidara struck him with a disparaging glare. "You think you've got morning class or something, perverted bitch, hn?"

Itachi paid him no more attention, veering for the door to read his paperwork elsewhere. Aware that he'd probably lost his bedroom's personal privacy function for the duration of Deidara's residence. "You'll find that in the bathroom, where you left it." Meaning the robe. Itachi slid the bedroom door shut behind him and joined Hidan out in the hall.

Hidan's expression was painted in smug questioning. "So what he feel like?"

"Excuse me?" Itachi asked maturely, before catching on in sudden revulsion. "Agh, no. Hidan."

Hidan cackled at his blind innocence. He smacked a hand on his shoulder. "But seriously. You had him for one night. One night, and he was fucking you naked, eh? Easy kill much."

Itachi shifted him off. "I think you've got your head in the gutter."

"I think you've got your head in much worse places!"

Itachi made an irritated noise before proceeding away again. He barely caught the sexual derogatory that shot around this place. Usually when Hidan and Kisame sat around making jokes about Deidara's sexual allure, he kept quiet. He played no part in the discussing of his team mate's body behind his back.

Deidara would walk in some mornings, late to a meeting, hair roughly tied and eyes bright blue from a surprise awakening, going, "Sorry I'm late, hn." And Itachi would regard him with disdainful eyes and deduce, 'What a child.'

Not the other members. Hidan used to cough a small noise that some of the others caught and coughed along to. Deidara never got any of it. Right over his blonde head.

Deidara looked seductive. He could not help that much, as he dropped himself down into a chair beside his partner, Sasori. And sometimes, even Sasori had to look away.

Itachi sighed, banishing the thought of Deidara lying peacefully in his bed the night before. A pretty picture of attraction.

Itachi tried to think of Hikaru, out in the world somewhere. Fighting Kumori.

'I won't let your brother get hurt,' He swore in his head. 'Keep thinking of your goal, Hikaru. I'll keep thinking of mine.'

{Y*M*M}

Madara's office teemed with important paperwork. Deidara felt the weight of war itself descend on him as he entered through the doorway.

Madara's eyes had leapt up to him the moment his figure had shadowed at the door. He put aside the document he'd been too distracted to bother read anyway. "Deidara. Come here." Madara got up before Deidara had pressed the door shut. He came around the desk, surprising Deidara as he turned around.

Deidara sucked in a breath as Madara's hands slunk round his waistline. "You're better now, aren't you? You look better."

Barely, Deidara thought, but chose to keep thought to himself. "Hn."

Madara smiled at the expression of the word, fond of it entirely. He tipped his face down towards Deidara, until their noses were in risk of touching. "I've thought about you, my love."

Jarring terms. Deidara received them like swear words. He waited with misting blue eyes for the words to be extended on. But they weren't.

"Madara…" Deidara coughed the choking sound from his voice. "Do you…have a mission for me to…" Deidara's breath caught, as Madara's touch weaved up somewhere uncomfortable. The sensation broke his train of thought. "Um…" He wanted to recover himself and raise protest. But they were so secluded in his office walls that resistance would be meaningless if he'd tried it.

It only took twelve minutes of intimate conversation to wind them down the road of no return.

Deidara felt the desk wood scrape his arms unpleasantly. He'd gone down with ease to rest his front on Madara's desk. While their leader worked with the back of him.

Madara had not forgotten then. What he really felt for Deidara.

'It's not love, it's lust.' Deidara fathomed in immense hostility up in his mind, as his robe slid off his back. He remained quiet on the outside though. He was reverting back to the days when things had gone unspoken. Not unfelt, just unspoken.

Deidara arched his back until that hurt too much, groaning at the demand. Willing it to be over. It always ended, eventually, he tried to remind himself. Just hold your breath. Just deflect your thoughts.

"Is this fine?" Madara's voice broke another realm barrier. First, days ago, when it had intruded on the silence of the aftermath. And now here, during the act itself. Deidara feared the words he'd conjure if Madara let him speak now.

So he bit his mouth shut, breathing louder than his thoughts were. "Hn." The sound came naturally. It was all he could muster as the tears pricked into his eyes. Even though he didn't mean the word.

{Y*M*M}

Six days later, the first mission had been assigned to Deidara. It resulted in Itachi's attendance, since Sasori was still recovering from his battle injuries.

"Map says go straight." Itachi corrected Deidara's poor judgment of geography.

"Map says go ta hell, ya fuck." Deidara snapped back, veering the way Itachi had directed him to anyway.

Itachi rolled his eyes off to the side in plain embarrassment for his childishness. Didn't he even want to grow up?

"I know you've brought them." Deidara muttered pointedly as they leapt through the tree branches.

"No."

"You did."

"You can't have them."

Deidara snorted. "Hey, that's not fair. I need them just as much as you do."

"No, you don't." Itachi told him firmly, fixing his stare ahead. "No one needs them. They're…bad in overdose."

"Ain't everything?"

"You're a drug addict, ya know that?" Itachi told Deidara, flicking his gaze to him. "Get off the stuff. And leave me alone."

"Give me my fix first."

Itachi breathed out deeply as they landed near their mission's target area. Deidara pulled up a second later. "What's the matter?" He asked half heartedly, still imagining the blue pain killer pills he was sure Itachi had smuggled in with him. And the relief they'd do for his aching back. "Itachi, I've been feeling like crap all week. Give me the pill bottle."

Itachi's hand flew to his ally's mouth and guarded it. "Shut your trap." He said calmly. His eyes scanned the furthest reaches of their sights, hard pressed to detect enemies. They were on the borderlines of a rival nation.

"Hm-hm." Deidara mumbled angrily, smacking at his hand with a billowing black sleeve. "Gwet woff!"

"You need to take the front road." Itachi told him suddenly. "I'm going in the back, where they'll least expect us. So do your thing and make a noise till I've retrieved the mission item."

"You want me, to be decoy?" Deidara said in disgust, as soon as Itachi had freed his unhappy mouth again. "Why the fuck am I the hard part?"

"They're just your standard enemy, Deidara. Half of them aren't Chunnin yet."

"Age don't matter, ya dumb fuck. I'm talking numbers. And that's a lot of work down there!"

"Okay fine. You want the easy bit?"

"Hn."

"Okay here it is: you're gonna slide in the back way. Of course there's a hidden entrance; you can just Sharigan your way to finding it. Then you can handle the guard force waiting on the other end. Do that quietly: like maybe, Sharigan them or something. Then lastly, you want to get over the trap work, without setting it off. To do that, your Sharigan should effectively…"

"Fuck you."

"Or you can blow shit up on the front road."

"I'm on that shit."

"Good. We'll meet back here, but only once you're sure I've cleared my part. Oh, and Deidara…"

"What?" He snapped, twisting his body back to skewer Itachi with his gaze. He was surprised by the peace offering.

"Here, take…"

"Three. I know the dosage." Deidara's fingers pressed round the pill bottle. An elated feeling filled him.

"Just don't take them until the mission's cleared, alright?"

"Right, right." Deidara thought of the morning sickness Madara had given him for the past three nights in a row. He gazed out after Itachi's departure. "Just one won't kill me, man. But thanks for trusting me."

{Y*M*M}

The mission lasted for longer than they would have liked. Throughout the tedious eight hour period, Deidara found himself assailed by hordes of weak village guards. And their neighbors. And their allies. And apparently their neighbors' allies.

"For the love of God!" He cried at last, throwing another exploding jutsu out. "Do you ever die?"

He caught an oncoming legion pouring in through the village gates out of the corner of his eye. He could hear the shouting of still more men coming the opposite way. Itachi hadn't shown signs of emergence yet.

"Itachi!" Deidara yelled at nothing, dodging an onslaught of kunais that served no purpose in their untrained wielders hands. He found the time in between destroying one legion and turning to face another to get the blue pill bottle out from his robe. He swallowed three pills dry. He was going to retreat with or without his ally in a minute. He only had one pill left by that stage of battle.

They'd stopped working. They weren't even slowing him down anymore, which had been their advantage at an earlier point. At least then the hordes of uselessness had been something of a dilemma.

Without the challenge, his boredom levels were driving him to suicide.

"Itachi!"

Itachi was having less luck. The walls of the fortress he was invading were impenetrable. Traps, guards, jutsus, seals. They'd been caged in by everything.

The item in question-the reason the Akatsuki had been appointed this mission-wasn't even the most valuable of its kind. Another forbidden jutsu. That just happened to conflict with the jutsu the village guarding it was known for. In other words, a threat to no one but them.

Itachi berated that fact as he got closer to the target. Seriously, if whoever bought this jutsu off them wanted to use it to destroy this village, they could be his guest.

When he finally maneuvered past the last of the scroll's defense, he was panting with exhaustion. He took hold of it and ran. Finally clear of the tunnel, and out in the diminishing sunlight, his thoughts were able to return to other things. Like Deidara.

"Dear God…" Itachi murmured quietly, as an exploding bird half the size of the village raised its head at them. He shook his head to clear it, aware that the sickness of motion he always got from missions was well on its way. He'd be coughing blood any minute now. He had to get Deidara and get out.

"Deidara!" Itachi summoned him, rushing over.

The crowd broke at the sight of him, diverging into two halves on either side of his approach.

"It's that monster!" Someone cried, abandoning outright.

The others twisted nervously, anxious to follow him.

Deidara rolled his eyes, still keeping the bird jutsu up over their heads. "Yeah, you're so fucking popular. Rub it in."

"Deidara, we have to go."

"Just a minute…" Deidara turned an eerie smile on the last of the village's defenders. Their eyes blazed in sincere terror. "Art's a bang, you bastards." His hand fell downwards and brought the bird crashing down with it.

{Y*M*M}

"Ah!" Itachi caught the doorframe, the rush of pain seizing his thoughts. They were back in his room already.  
Deidara paused anxiously, unaccustomed to viewing Itachi in pain. He usually just the heard the sounds of his agony from his room down the hall. The picture was even worse.

"Itachi, hn?"

"Ah," Itachi ground his teeth together, pushing his sleeve up against his mouth. Deidara could hear blood gathering there.

"Hell, man. Hold on, I'll get you water."

"The pill bottle." Itachi managed to choke out, holding his breath and knowing he'd need it.

Deidara nodded absently. "Yeah sure man. Where is it?"

Itachi looked bleakly back at him. "You've got it."

"Oh that's right…" Deidara paused. A horrible weight descended on him. "Oh…Oh, God…" Weren't even enough pills for a dosage left.

"What?" Itachi got most of the word out, leaning all his weight on the doorframe with exerted effort. He couldn't manage to look up anymore, missing the guilt that flecked Deidara's face.

"Nothin'." Deidara recovered quickly, casting for escape. "Ya see, I just…don't think you need those." Itachi's loathing glare, crazed with pain, struck him and he was frightened into continuing. "I mean…they're making you worse."

"Give me the bottle."

"They won't help you, man."

"Give me the bottle, Deidara."

"They're bad for you!"

Itachi stepped forwards in an effort to catch Deidara, grabbing at his robe for support. Deidara panicked. Itachi tried to locate the bottle in his pocket, where Deidara reckoned he'd be even angrier to discover its lack of contents.

When he was close enough to reach inside Deidara's pocket, Deidara resorted to cheap tricks he'd never actually employed before.

He hugged Itachi around the neck. "Stop!" There was no reasoning. No validation given to the statement. 'Stop' was the accrual of it.

Itachi hesitated in his arms, confused beyond recovery. He forced his mouth open. "Are you hugging me?" He had to clarify.

"Um…" Deidara bordered on denying it. But that would undo everything he'd managed to use as distraction here. "Yeah, I…"

Itachi felt the haze of the moment waver. He began to pull away as spikes of pain shot through his head again. He made a motion for Deidara's pocket once more.

"Wait!" Deidara hugged him tighter. His helpless eyes darted a little from atop Itachi's disheveled black hair. "You should…think about it."

"About what?"

"About the damage they'll do."

"Deidara…" He got through eventually, voice intermittent between the gasps of breathless strain. "I'm in serious pain here, Deidara…"

Deidara believed him. His stomach sank with guilt. How was he supposed to know Itachi only had one bottle?

"But don't the pills give you more pain?" Deidara hazarded asking, knowing the severity he felt the morning after a couple of them.

"Yes…" Itachi managed in weak words. "But less pain than this."

Deidara's remorse spilt into his voice. "I'm sorry." Itachi just thought he meant for the pain. That he was sorry Itachi had pain so severe that the damage of a drug was actually a worthy trade off.

He looked up, just barely seeing Deidara. He tried to steady himself. "Why does it bother you?" He asked suddenly, in genuine incomprehension.

Deidara shrugged. "I get pain, okay?"

He sounded sincere for a moment. Itachi verged on saying something, but a piercing cough rendered him helpless. He spat out more blood, losing the will to stand and sinking to his knees. Deidara sank with him willingly.

"Just breathe man." Diedara quoted Itachi from when he helped him earlier.

Itachi scoffed inwardly at his hint of arrogance. He tried to imagine what it must have been like for Hikaru.

Had Hikaru felt this way with Deidara? Had he embraced this trust?

Well there was warmth to Deidara. And much room for calm amid the chaos. Itachi had never expected to live to discover a moment in which Deidara spoke on even breath. He usually shouted.

"You gonna sleep here, hn?" Deidara raised the question, surveying Itachi's head as it leaned down towards his lap.

"Maybe. Or just, give me the bottle. Whatever."

"Um…"

"I'll go to bed or something. I just need to take three first…"

"Sleep here." Deidara changed his mind capriciously.

Itachi frowned, the pain still in possession of most of his mind. "What now?"

Deidara pulled his head down onto his lap. "You were sleeping. I'll be quiet, you…you just carry on doing that."

"You're just gonna wait here all night?" Itachi confirmed, bordering on disbelief. Assuming he might be delusional with pain.

"Su-sure man." Deidara removed the regret in that effort from his voice. He tried to sound helpful and pleasant. "You just overcome this, hn?"

In the most unexpected of tranquil moments, Itachi found solace enough to drift to sleep. Beside Deidara. Who would have thought there'd ever be solace to be found from the chaotic realm that was Deidara?

{Y*M*M}

Itachi awoke to Deidara's irregular breathing. That indicated he was sleeping. When Itachi freed himself from Deidara's arms, he noticed that Deidara was resting his head against him. They'd reversed positions at some point in the night.

"Deidara." Itachi considered it polite to wake him, since morning had broken. They'd be expected at the meeting that morning. They were due for report back. "Dei…"

"Madara…"Deidara forced his eyes open, blinking them up at Itachi as he lifted his head. He had one hand gripping Itachi's robe, which he thrust back at Itachi the minute he'd registered reality.

"Itachi!" He sounded mortified, like he'd forgotten something. Then he calmed down instantly, like he'd remembered, and threw up a false smile. "Hi."

"Are you insane?" Itachi asked unthinkingly, perturbed.

Deidara maintained his meaningless smile. "Not often."

"Why Madara?"

"Hmm?"

"Madara. You said Madara."

"Oh…" Deidara was struggling to build barricades in time. His mind flit for excuses. In the pressure, he moved his hand up behind his head to ruffle his ponytail. "Well, um, I guess I was sort of dreaming of being at the meeting already, reporting back. Speaking of which, are we late?"

"We will be." Itachi bought the reasoning, flicking Deidara's fringe in his face. "You haven't even groomed yet."

"What am I, a dog, hn?"

"Just…do your hair." Itachi levered up off the ground. A realization struck him immediately. This was the morning after his usual night's pain broke out. Blood spluttering, mind shattering pain.

And yet he felt no pain the morning after. The blue pills, and their destructive side effect, hadn't rescued him.

Deidara somehow had.

Deidara was still rousing himself on the floor blurrily as Itachi stared back down at him, contemplating. Morning relief was something he was unused to.

When Deidara glanced up midway through a yawn, he took Itachi's stare for added pressure. "Okay, I get it. I'm up." He pushed up to his feet. "Hell man, no tolerance."

"Just get done." Itachi decided to go along with that perspective, veering to the bathroom to wash his face. Still no after morning pain-no price he'd usually pay for using the pills. He couldn't conceive it, but he enjoyed it while it lasted.

The lightness of it left him unintentionally more contented.

"Deidara, hurry up."

"I'm trying." Deidara bitched, raking his fingers roughly through his fringe in front of a mirror. "What've you done here?"

Itachi swept forwards. He brushed Deidara's hand away gently. Then he evened out the knot to Deidara's ungrateful stare.

"Thanks I guess. Hn."

"Are we good to go?"

"Yeah yeah."

They struck out the door together, suddenly realizing the time they'd wasted. Itachi shoved Deidara to speed up, who responded with an expected outbreak of colorful language.

"Watch what the fuck you're doing!"

They arrived at the meeting seconds before Hidan, who was always last and always held them up. Itachi sat himself down with dignity. Deidara slunk into his seat out of breath. Of course Madara pretended not to notice his graceless arrival.

"You all had missions this week past, if I'm correct?" Madara enquired. He looked to Kakuzu first. "Kakuzu. What were the results of battle?"

"Cleared." Kakuzu said levelly. "We left half the village dead outside their grounds. Their own fault for chasing us."

"Did you get the scriptures?"

"All of them."

Deidara felt the tire of a rude awakening creeping up. He hadn't been ready to face the day yet. Deidara slunk his chin down onto his arms disinterestedly.

Madara refused to acknowledge his blatant casualness. "Itachi? What happened in the South?"

"We retrieved the scroll. It's where you wanted it."

Madara nodded unquestionably. "Good."

"I think Deidara was on that mission." Hidan brought up, smiling sweetly as he swiveled the spotlight.

Deidara pulled his head up begrudgingly, muttering miserably beneath his breath for the call out.

Madara turned his gaze to him. "Fare well?" He forced the comment.

"Yea'." Deidara got past it quickly.

Madara agreed to end the uncomfortable conversation. It was hard for them to act casual outside of their true relationship. "Good. Then I'll expect you all back here in…"

"Do you not want to tell Deidara anything?" Hidan asked, incapable of suppressing his surprise. It was incredible how much they intended to veil him from.

Deidara poured his plea into the words, "Tell me what?"

"There's nothing to tell." Madara sniped, glowering to quiet Hidan. "You shouldn't speak out of place without my regard, Hidan. Your contribution is mostly uninformed triviality."

"Can we discuss the attacks?" Deidara raised suddenly, interest returned with a vengeance. He'd still been left to darkness on the subject. "I have no idea what's happened."

"I'll tell you everything." Madara's voice elevated above the others, and faster than the others. His eyes fell snake like upon Deidara. "We can discuss it in my office. Deidara."

Only Deidara received the implicit threat in that. He caught his breath at the unwanted imagery. "Nah doesn't matter." He put out rapidly, to Itachi's bemused stare. "All politics. Doesn't bother me."

Kakuzu snorted in disbelief, thoughts probably revolving around how childish that was. He muttered distinctly so that the others could clearly hear him. "Unbelievable."

"I'll see you next week then." Madara blustered, rising and towering out at them all. "Get out."

They bee lined for the door like caged animals freed. Itachi made to reach Deidara's side and question his response, but Kakuzu caught up to him beforehand.

"So you don't give a damn? Come heaven or hell, you just wanna suck air and live each day as it comes, that right, Deidara?"

Deidara refused to subject himself to answering, pride still bruised from their last encounter. When his silence had irritated Kakuzu enough, it earned him a shove off course of his walking.

"Fuck it." Deidara landed against Itachi, who had been coming up to meet them. He shoved off from his chest in frustration. "Why don't you just get a life, and get out of mine."

Kakuzu didn't get mad this time. He masked his temper. "I'm concerned, Deidara. You're not much more than weight here in our agency."

"Don't waste my time on your stupid concerns. I don't give a shit about you."

Kakuzu stopped, resulting in Hidan trotting straight into his back. "Hey, what gives?"

"Are you seriously going to brave this a second round?" Kakuzu demanded of Deidara.

Free of the drug's hold, Deidara nodded back up at him. "Any number of times. I'll keep saying it. Stay out. You don't know me, Kakuzu. Back the fuck off!" It was a simple outburst. But Itachi paused in the passage way to catch it all. Hidan stopped dead. Zetsu appeared to be the only one genuinely disinterested, leaving the hallway.

Kakuzu considered Deidara from across the variation in their heights. He snorted disbelievingly again. "You're not thinking about your situation at all, are you? What if we stop picking up after you? And you have nowhere to go? Who're you going to run to with the questions you never thought to ask now?"

Deidara frowned. "Is this about war?"

"This is about dead weight." Kakuzu verified for him. "Don't tell me you're unaware of it. Or are you just unaware of everything?"

"This doesn't need to be personal, Kakuzu." Itachi interjected. A respectful audience met him. "You've spoken. We're all aware of how matters stand. For now, there isn't anything any of us can do to alter them."

"Defending, are we?" Kakuzu ventured in with.

Itachi spoke little. But what he did say always meant something. "Kakuzu…What will winning a battle against your own team accomplish?"

The others waited for Kakuzu to better that. He set his glare on Itachi and then settled it on Deidara when it was finished with him. His voice came grudgingly. "He's hardly worth being considered part of the team. That's my argument." Before making his departure final, he hovered at Deidara's shoulder on passing. "And if you think Itachi's got your back, kid, then think again. Itachi's a traitor."

Itachi let the words hang as Kakuzu strode away, Hidan racing up beamingly to close the berth between them.

Deidara shook his head, flicking his gaze to Itachi. "I had that, man."

"Don't. Let. Him bully you." Itachi broke the sentence up for him. He swept away in a streak of black and red.

Deidara looked mystified, uncertain he'd heard correctly.

Itachi couldn't have admitted he broke their dispute up out of concern. So he had to pretend it irritated him, and that simply, he had warded off a situation for his own sake. Not anyone else's.

Deidara blew air from his lungs in one deep sigh. "Assholes, all of you. Think you know stuff about stuff. You know fuck!"

"Learn, some adjectives." Itachi's voice reproached from out of sight down the corridor.

Deidara bit back the only adjective he knew.

{Y*M*M}

"Are you alive?" Hikaru asked, laughingly.

Sasuke shot to a sit up position. His glossed eyes stuck to the intruder. "What're you still doing here?" He hissed through his teeth, glancing at his bedroom door. "How did you get in here?"

"I had to tell you something. Now, when I said kill Itachi…"

"Ahh-ah!" Sasuke slammed at his own desk, setting its occupants crashing down. "I've had about enough of this. How many times do we have to go over it? Find him quickly. Kill him quickly. I get it. Get…away from me."

"But do you get it. Really? You missed out a few steps there." Hikaru noted, leaning his head against the doorframe.

"What the hell difference does it make? It all ends in death."

"Oh, but it makes all the difference!" Hikaru exclaimed in disbelief. "How naïve, child. Haven't you grasped it yet? What death means? What messages you can convey through death?"

"I don't really give a damn." Sasuke confessed, drawing his sword up off the ground and closer to where he sat, on his bed. "Why are you here-again?"

"I'm reconfirming it with you. And clearly, I'm not wasting my time, since you still don't know it yet. It's…"

"I know it." Sasuke interrupted him. "I get it. I just don't give a shit about it. When I kill Itachi, and I am sorry to break this to you, it will be my way. That's the only way I want to see him die. Not on orders. Not on some psycho's brainwashing. But on genuine hatred."

"Hatred?" The word struck Hikaru enough to reinstate it.

"Yes. Hatred. I _hate_ my brother, and I will kill my brother in the most hateful way possible."

"Hatred."

"Do you doubt me?"

Hikaru broke from his reverie, having just chanted the word on impulse. "Uh, yeah. No, I don't."

"Then get out of my way and let me finish him." Sasuke looked dead tired, and ready to sleep right in front of his enemy. Hikaru wasn't as much dangerous as he was impulsive. Sasuke couldn't trust how they fared from one moment to the next.

"Sasuke," Hikaru's tone changed, suddenly inquisitive. Politely so. Like an old friend prying to know you better. "How come you hate your brother?"

"Are…you serious?"

"Well I mean, yeah, I know he betrayed you and…all…but…Didn't you ever believe that it must have been…impossible?"

Sasuke's eyes shifted with conflicting thoughts. "What do you mean?"

"I just mean…Don't you ever believe, for a second, that it wasn't Itachi's choice to do what he did?"

"No."

"Don't you ever want to?" Hikaru lost himself to bad memories. He wasn't even talking to Sasuke anymore: it was just a wall bouncing back answers. His fears bled out. His thoughts filled the spaces.

"_Deidara…"_

"_Get away." Deidara had done the unthinkable. He'd backed away from Hikaru. Tears filled his voice. "Get away, Hikaru!"_

"_Deidara, I promise you. I'm not doing this."_

_Deidara lapsed into the disorientation of crying, too young to understand the concept of giving up. Too young to give up._

"_Deidara, please. They're making me do this." Hikaru had wanted to run to his brother. But Deidara's body language forbid it. He looked so alone, crying a few steps away from his only family._

"_Don't come back, hn." Deidara had said to him._

_Hikaru felt those words. He'd carried their burden. He'd accepted his fate in them. "Alright." He'd promised on a quiet breath. His eyes had locked to Deidara's. Pain and misery passed between them. Whatever bond they'd had broken. "I'm sorry you think I don't want to keep you, baby brother." Hikaru had admitted honestly. "Because I want to keep you most of all."_

"I mean seriously, Itachi could be trying, for all you know." Hikaru added absently, forcing himself into reality.

"What do you know?" Sasuke demanded of him. "You know nothing. You're just muttering to yourself, like I'm not even here."

"I apologize." Hikaru gathered himself, smiling. "Let me try that again."

"Well since you don't need me to hold a substantial conversation with yourself, feel free to go." Sasuke waved at the door impatiently. "Don't let me keep you the hell up or anything."

"Sasuke?"

"For the love of…What?"

"Don't kill Itachi with hatred. Even if you hate him now." Hikaru took in a deep breath, recalling his friend in crystal clarity. "You loved him once, remember?"

"I try not to remember."

"Well, that's a sad situation, because…I'm sure he remembers."

{Y*M*M}

"It's so fucking cold." Deidara complained, tumbling into bed beside Itachi.

Itachi blinked in alarm at the intrusion of his privacy. They'd been so haphazard for the time past that they hadn't really allocated who got what of the only double bed present in the room. And apparently, Deidara got the most of it.

"Why didn't we think of this?" Itachi murmured blearily, rubbing his eyes open.

"Is this a problem?" Deidara demanded, not unused to sharing bed spaces with other men.

"No." Itachi produced half heartedly. "I just mean…we should have thought ahead for this." The nights up until then, one of them had always been busy. Or had a mission. One slept at day, one slept at night. A few times Deidara had slept out in Madara's rooms…of which Itachi had assumed he'd been preoccupied with work or something. But never, in all the duration of Deidara's stay, had they wound up in the only bed at the same time.

"You don't…think this will work, do you?" Itachi raised an eyebrow at Deidara, who seemed to be getting comfortable on his much wider half of the bed.

"I do, why?" He whipped his gaze up to Itachi.

Black hair fell like curtains across his dismally hanging head. "No…reason."

"Are, you…an introvert?"

"Excuse me?"

"Do you need space and privacy and other loner things?"

"That's not necessarily what introvert means."

"Oh excuse me for trying out new words."

Itachi breathed genuine laughter. He sat upright in bed. "Look, this can work out maybe. If you stick to your side-which is over there, by the way-and I stick to my side."

"So what is the word for overly sensitive and completely isolated?"

"You wouldn't pronounce it properly."

Deidara snorted, unfazed by the battering of his linguistic capacities. "Hmph. Fine. Bet I know a few words you wouldn't wanna know either."

"I…bet you do, actually."

Deidara laughed quietly. He shifted in the bed and turned to face Itachi. "You know, I was thinking about why I fight with Kakuzu."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah, it's cos I like fighting."

Itachi laughed at the childish desire, before realizing that Deidara was serious. "Hmm?"

"Yeah, I like fighting with someone. Me and Hikaru used to fight, a lot."

"It's like a slumber party in here." Zetsu muttered, freaking them out as they met his face in the roof top.

"What the fuck!" Deidara started at it, pulling himself into a sit up position.

The Black Zetsu rolled it's eyes at him. "Seriously. Anyway, I have a message for you. Madara wants to see you."

"He's already sleeping." Itachi filled in for him. Deidara looked at him blankly for the impassive lie.

"Huh?"

Black Zetsu opened his mouth to protest the obvious, but the white half took over. "Let him have it, kuro. It's only one night."

Itachi waved to Zetsu. "It's not like I don't help you out."

Whatever that meant, black Zetsu took it with an ill-concealed growl. "Yes…"

He slipped Deidara his unimpressed gaze before departing. Their shapeless figure merged back into the rooftop, eerily gone from them.

Deidara shuddered as it vanished. "Hate that guy."

"He's harmless." Itachi assured him, laying back down again. He moved his eyes to Deidara, who had suddenly gone unusually quiet. "You okay?"

"Fine." Deidara lied, having been uncomfortably reminded of how much Madara pursued him. Through everything: half his nights of living with the Akatsuki would be spent this way.

"Why do you see Madara so often?"

Itachi's words unsettled Deidara. He looked to them with no promise of an answer. Itachi permitted his silence. "You don't have to say. I was just curious."

Deidara shrugged, not really looking at him. His mind had taken him elsewhere.

Itachi felt the conversation strain itself. "Yeah. Well, goodnight I guess."

"Do you know anything about this war?"

"This war?" Itachi opened his eyes again.

"Yeah. Why am I the centre of it? What did Sasori come running in to warn me about?"

Itachi's fading mind was forced to regain itself. He sighed himself awake again. "No one's sure, really." He gave him half truth, covering any theories about Hikaru. Not revealing that Madara and himself where the only two people who knew everything. "I guess it's just that your jutsu's useful."

"Oh really? More useful than Sharigan? Or immortality like Hidan's walking around with? Get real." Deidara appeared insulted. "I'm young, I'm not stupid."

"But you are young." Itachi reconfirmed. "That's why you're an easier target, I suppose." The lies leaked out from everywhere.

Deidara blinked at them, curling his lip a little unsurely. "Yeah…I dunno, man. I'm gonna need convincing."

"I thought politics didn't 'bother you'…or whatever."

"Well they don't." Deidara maintained his lie from earlier.

"Then what? Kakuzu's words get to you?"

"Kakuzu can't tell me anything I don't already know."

"Then what?"

Deidara paused. "What do you mean what?"

"This isn't as scary as you think it is." Itachi let his eyes fall shut. "Just go to bed. Try not to think about it."

"How the fuck will that help?"

"Deidara…" Itachi touched his face as he revealed signs of panicking. He stared at him. "I won't let you walk into anything blind."

Deidara appeared more uncomfortable with the words than the fact that Itachi was touching his face. "Why're you helping me?" He wanted to know suddenly.

"Same reason you helped me."

Deidara paused his thoughts, doubting very much that Itachi had consumed all of his medication and felt somehow guilty enough to consider helping him, the same way he had. He suspected he didn't mean that. Another thought occurred to him, and he quoted himself. "You get pain?"

"More than that, I get your pain."

"My pain?"

"A brother missing his brother kind of pain."

Deidara wavered at the suggestion, unsure of himself. Unable to frame an appropriate response. "Huh?"

"Do you know about Sasuke, Deidara?"

"Sort of."

"Sasuke is like Hikaru, but innocent."

"I'm also like Hikaru, but innocent."

Itachi snorted. "That's yet to be proven."

"What do I ever do?" Deidara frowned abruptly. "In fact, what do I even do to deserve the crappy life I get?"

Itachi mused over the thought. "What's so bad about your life?"

"What's so bad…" Deidara caught himself. He didn't want to discuss Madara with anyone. Ever. "Well what do you care?"

"I'm just…asking. Why are you so sensitive?"

"I'm not."

"You know something, you're an introvert…" Itachi discovered aloud. "You want nothing to do with other people."

Deidara stared pensively at the announcement. He hadn't really had very good experiences with other people. "Well people are stupid." Deidara provided in childish evasiveness, withholding his memories. "I don't need them anymore."

"Anymore?"

"Hn." Deidara could feel the shard of rock pressing against him from inside his Akatsuki robe's pocket. A fragment of what had once been a stone bird. He felt that way sometimes. Like Hikaru's broken stone bird. "I'm young. But I'm not stupid."

Itachi nodded his head calmly, sensing the silence approaching them. "Well if you ever change your mind, I'll be waiting."

Deidara wanted to find that strange, but it was more reassuring. How had they started to open up this way again? "Yeah." Deidara coughed, glancing away and deviating. "Let's pretend I've ever changed my mind about anything."

"Haven't you?"

"No, I have actually. They say the stone village ninja's ideas are permanent, like rock." Deidara smiled as he realized it. "Me and my art are more…"

"Transient?"

"Huh?"

"Your art. It's transient."

"No. My art's a bang! Get it right."

Itachi made an amused sound. "That's what…I was saying, really."

"Then just say it." Deidara 'tsked'. "Complicated much."

"All brothers are complicated."

{Y*M*M}

"_Sasuke!"_

"_What, Itachi?" Little Sasuke looked despondently back at him. Clearly, rejection hurt long after._

"_I'm sorry I snapped at you earlier, Sasuke. I was busy."_

"_With what?"  
"With important stuff."_

"_What's more important than being with me?"_

"_It's…" Itachi paused for an offbeat moment. "Nothing, actually."_

{Y*M*M}

This chapter felt really rushed. I just don't have the time to read through these chapters anymore. If you think they're long to read, try writing them…Lol.

I do enjoy it, don't get me wrong. Like a puppy that bites…it's just painful, that's all.

Lol.

I am sorry if any of these scenes seem 'unnatural' or rushed. And I realize there's a ton of swearing…I don't know what comes over me sometimes.

This may come as arb…but I really want Dei and Itachi to just have sex already.

And I do try to write sex classily. Do you think that prevails…even a little?

Lol, thanks for whoever's keeping up with this,

~AfterForev3R


	4. Chapter 4: Desire

Chapter Four

Desire

~You Made Me

"_The worst thing you can try to do is cling to something that is gone, or to recreate it."_  
Johnette Napolitano

Deidara sneezed, cutting into the silence. Itachi's hand flew to cover his mouth with hard pressing eyes. Spying was pointless with this kid.

"We are…" Madara's words were trailing off after hearing the clumsy noise of his intruders. He diverted gaze from Zetsu with a wan smile. "Um, Deidara. Can I help you?"

Itachi was surprised that Madara had identified him by the mere sound of his sneeze. But then he noticed another dynamic to the picture and smacked Deidara for it.

"Ow, what?"

His swishing tail of blonde hair was clearly visible beyond the concealment of the pillar. It was too late to pull back, so Deidara braved confrontation under Itachi's prompting stare. He stepped beyond the pillar and into the vast consultation room Madara had made his second office.

"Hey," he said innocently, more of a child than an Akatsuki.

Itachi just found it cute by now. He rolled his eyes and kept himself out of sight while Deidara prattled for them.

"To what do I owe the visit?" Madara inquired politely, oddly welcoming of his spy.

Deidara blushed a little at the awkward stare he was receiving from the two halves of Zetsu. "Can I have…a word? With you?"

It seemed like the most probable response would be to say no. Zetsu appeared under the impression that it would be anyway.

"Certainly."

Zetsu's eyes flicked to Madara and bore into him. His doting tone had stunned them all, Itachi included. He got up from the table like a father might abandon business for a much loved child.

Deidara played the same tune as he smiled back at him. "Thanks. Only take a minute."

They proceeded to the back of the room, to Zetsu's astonishment. Itachi craned around the corner in an effort to better judge the conversation by their mouth movements.

Deidara was preying on Madara's infatuation with him, placing irresistible emphasis on his every word and every subtle movement. Threading loose hair behind his ear. Laughing a little as he asked the favor. Blue eyes bright and captivating.

Madara appeared caught between what he should say and what he wanted to say when Deidara was finished with him.

"So basically, we need one more week up in the country side."

Madara blinked a little, trying to process the point of the statement. He managed speech on a twisted tongue at long last. "You want a holiday in the high lands?"

"Well, not a holiday…A recuperation session…" Deidara tried his hand at words Itachi had described it as. "We'll be training, of course. It's just to get ourselves back up to standard again. Ya know, with the war upcoming and all."

"Well…You could recuperate here." Madara frowned in slight concern for the request.

Itachi bid Deidara to recover wordlessly from behind the dark pillar.

"Well yeah, but, it's the break we're after. Ya know, from the hideout…" Deidara cast around in vain. "I mean, Itachi's coughing blood here and I think his lungs are charred by now. He could really use the open air of the country."

"For a whole week?"

"For one short week!"

Deidara's bombardment of charm was taking its toll. His adoring smile could not go unheard even when his excuses fell on better judging ears. Madara sighed his reluctance. "I suppose. But I'll need you to train in that time."

"Done!"

"And stay on the absolute down low. That's essential."

"Sure thing."

"If you break cover, you are dead. Do you understand that?"

"Yes!"

"And Deidara," Madara stepped towards Deidara, prompting the young Akatsuki member to turn back mid getaway.

"Hn?" Deidara hovered on spinning away and running back to Itachi.

The fact that the two of them were coming back at all urged Itachi to slink fully into hiding again, unable to be seen and unable to see them.

Deidara gasped a short sound as Madara pressed his lips to his own, afterwards freeing him gently. "Be careful."

Deidara's heart juddered. He couldn't stop himself from flicking a gaze towards the pillar he'd left Itachi behind. He inwardly hoped Itachi hadn't seen the action take place.

Zetsu evidently had. Everyone in the Akatsuki seemed to regard Zetsu as little more than a plant.

"Wow," Black Zetsu had to comment as Deidara strode past him to escape the room in hurried footsteps.

Deidara slid his eyes to him and glowered, unable to defend himself from the event while Madara was in earshot. "One word…" He mouthed.

"One way to get what we want," Zetsu added, dropping down into a chair at the weight of the surprise. "Um, so anyway. Madara?"

Deidara reached Itachi, face flushed. "Um, yeah, man," He muttered, "Told you I got this."

"What's with you?" Itachi wondered aloud at the sudden urgency of Deidara's running away.

"Nothing, man. Let's just get outta here."

{Y*M*M}

The sky was an endless expanse of cloudless blue.

Deidara hadn't packed much more than the small duffel bag slung across his shoulder. He threw a glance back at Itachi. "I can't believe we thought of this, hn."

"I can't believe we got this right," Itachi said, lightly packed as well.

The two of them mounted the tall hills that stretched out across the final miles leading to their lodging.

Itachi had arranged everything. Deidara had tagged behind him with the notable acceptance of someone who was a younger brother.

The trip had been uneventful leading up until then. In one sudden movement, Itachi sensed danger and pulled up sharply on the edge of a bend. "Deidara, wait."

"What, man?" Deidara would have blindly proceeded down the hillside if it weren't for Itachi's word of warning.

Itachi frowned a little. "Don't you hear that sound?"

"What…sound?"

Itachi turned his head back towards the road behind them. Something enemy was advancing.

"It's okay. Just stay close for now."

"Stay close why? What's the matter? What's going on?"

"Shh…" Itachi tried to keep his ears trained on the surrounding forest. Deidara's incessant voice was suffocating the effort.

"Itachi, hn? What's wrong?"

"Quiet."

"I needa know what's wrong, Itachi…"

"Behind you." Itachi reacted under the assumption that Deidara wouldn't find his feet in time. But he did.

"Wow," Deidara hopped out of range from the attacker. Itachi had already made his destination the attacker's position in an effort to shove Deidara from harm's way, but instead collided with the ninja.

"Itachi." Deidara pulled up in a storm of dust, forcing his eyes to the violent clash.

Itachi was making short work of his opponent. The ninja that had jumped them was flung left and right at his attack strength.

"Itachi, give way!" Deidara's clay bird flew out at startling velocity.

Itachi anticipated something like it and broke from its path in time.

"Katsu!"

The attacker's screams were all that was left of him, resonating on the air. A headband burnt from the tongues of the explosion's fire clattered to the ground in a combination of material and metal.

Itachi went to retrieve it and frowned furiously as soon as he had it in hand and under his sight. "Kumori."

"Those guys are stupid, tryna jump us one on two."

Itachi shook his head, dropping the remains of the headband down onto the path as though he didn't want to touch it. "I don't think they sent just one."

"Then what happened?"

Itachi shrugged, trying to evade the subject. He proceeded walking deliberately. "Anyway. We should get to the lodges."

"You think that's a good idea, hn? If we're being followed, they'll know where we're sleeping."

"If we stay out here, they'll know where we are." Itachi kept his gait consistent even as Deidara fell behind him.

The frustrated ally caught up the distance between them eventually. "Hey! Talking to you, Itachi, hn."

"Constantly," Itachi agreed. He drew up short outside the gate of small community shopping district.

Deidara ran up next to him, and shot eyes from Itachi to the market, then back again. "Think we should get food, hn?"

"No, I was thinking we should get directions to a new inn."

Deidara's stomach answered for him, and Itachi passed him his most unimpressed gaze. "But now that I mention it, Itachi…"

"We'll eat at the lodge."

"But I…"

"You know what, fine. We'll do anything that'll give me a moment of silence."

Food seemed the viable key to that. Itachi scoped the small town out with a glace of his sharigan to be sure no one drastically powerful and opposing existed in it. Before the coast was clear, Deidara had made his way inside the market place.

A busy street of people consumed them. They maneuvered through multiple food stalls and packed produce on their way to a diner of some kind. The sun was showing signs of setting through the faded windows of the restaurant they walked into.  
Deidara rushed to the bar even though Itachi gestured to an ordinary table.

"Alright then. I'm going to wash my hands of that guy's blood," Itachi said, worrying the conservative looking woman behind the counter. "Be right back."

Deidara bobbed his head distractedly. He fell into a barstool and waved the bartending lady across to him.

While the two of them were apart, three men from the Hidden Rain made their way into the diner. One of them spotted Deidara, and glanced across at the others. Their knowing smiles encouraged him.

Deidara had just placed an order for two near deadly intoxications of alcohol when the men approached him. He cast them a look shadowed in doubt.

"Hello," the first man greeted, smirking. A sharp fanged canine jutted out over his lip when he smiled that way.

Deidara appeared unamused as the three men crowded round him. His expression was even less humorous as one of them put his hand on his shoulder.

"Can I buy you a drink?" The first man asked him.

Deidara shouldered the one guy's hand off him, shoving him back an unbalanced step with the same arm he'd been touching. He threw a snarling set of teeth with disinterested eyes up at the man who'd been speaking to him. "I can buy my own drink."

"Oh wow," The fanged guy's smile widened, enticed by the uptake. "I guess that makes you single?"

"I guess that makes me a boy, you stupid fuck face."

The man giggled disbelievingly, leaning down towards Deidara's face. "You got pretty eyes, to make up for that foul mouth…"

"Don't touch me!"

The discussion was growing heated out beyond the bathroom as Itachi unknowingly proceeded to scrub blood from his fingers. He gave in when it was as best as he could get it, thrusting the bathroom door open and stepping back out again. He drank in the sight of conflict, with Deidara at its centre.

Deidara was on his feet, spitting venom. One Rain ninja had him at the pony tail, which he was resisting with adamancy. Another had both Deidara's hands cuffed in his own to stop him from summoning any jutsu he made to. The last was dipping his mouth towards Deidara's face.

Itachi was rendered speechless, tearing from his daze to react in time. "Get away from him."

"Or what?" The speaker turned his fanged smile on Itachi. It met with a hostile glare.

"Or I'll kill you!" Deidara flicked his head up, eyes spewing hatred. He wrested from the man who'd detained his hold in one furious motion, kicking backwards into the second man who'd grabbed onto his ponytail.

The woman behind the counter had scuttled off with a small outcry, abandoning her diner to the thugs and their victims.

Deidara's balled up fist struck the fanged guy in his stomach, before he turned his anger on the next guy.

Itachi stood back for a moment, as Deidara fought off his enemies. He'd never taken him for a pushover. But he'd never seen him react like this before.

Deidara kept going at the fanged ninja long after he should have been done with him. Even after the ninja couldn't get up anymore and was lying motionless on the ground, Deidara fell down astride him and continued his assault of him.

"Deidara, it's over," Itachi cooed up above him, to no notice from his ally.

Deidara landed fist after fist into the guy, eyes volatile and hateful. "Thought you were lucky you found someone who couldn't defend themselves, right? Think yourself lucky now?"

"Deidara…"

He slowed, but he didn't stop himself. Itachi had to bring himself into the combat zone directly and physically restrain Deidara by the arm to make him cease the attack.  
"It's over."

Deidara caught his breath in furious intakes. He pushed to his feet again in one angry motion. Blood dripped from his clenched hands. "Guys like this, Itachi…"

"Calm down. What happened?"

Deidara flicked his eyes at Itachi. "Don't tell me to calm down." He warned him in a high tenor. "I know what I did. They picked their battles."

"I know that. I've just…never seen you freak out so much."

"Freak out?" Deidara replayed the events from earlier in his quaking mind. "I'm not freaking out."

"_Don't touch me!" Deidara had been ten, stumbling backwards out of their way. They hadn't heard him above their laughter._

"_He wants you," The one whispered insensitively, poking his nose into Deidara's ear. "Go to him."_

"_No!" He tried to pull away. He'd tried fighting them. But he'd been too young and too incapable to make it._

"_Get away from me…"_

"_Don't freak out, kid. Don't freak out…"_

"Deidara?" Itachi's voice was simple, as it shattered the memory.

Deidara glared at him. "I'm fine."

"Okay."

"Stop looking at me like that."

"Okay. I will."

When Deidara made for the door, it was unmindful of the keeled over Rain ninja he'd grounded. One of them moaned as Deidara's foot met his open hand.

Itachi watched the door swing shut behind Deidara. He looked back at where Deidara had been sitting before, two untouched bottles of something vile there.

Deidara sure had dangerous taste in alcohol. Itachi picked it up and carried it out with him in his slightly bloodied hands regardless, certain that after all the murdering he'd committed, one act of theft wasn't going to change redemption.

{Y*M*M}

The lodge was quiet that time of year.

It allowed all attention to be on them as they walked into the check-in room, hands notably covered in crimson. Itachi's expression solemn, Deidara's murderous.

A stifled sound fluttered up from behind the big book on the welcome desk.

"Can…can we…help you…"

"Yeah, we're booked here. I sent a crow."

"Oh yes," she recalled the interesting creature that had arrived with its letter of query and departed with its letter of answer. Not unusual in the ninja world she supposed. "We…We welcome you."

Deidara huffed up to the desk, throwing his head on his arms nearby the brunette woman receiving them. Blood stained her countertop, but she tried not to meet his eyes.

Itachi lead Deidara away from her by his ponytail.

"Ow! Dumb fuck, that hurts like a…bitch…"

"Thank you," Itachi called back to the woman.

They skipped dinner in favor of Deidara's sulking. Eventually, Itachi heard the kid's stomach growling again. "You know, I have got that venom you ordered. If you wanna eat that."

"The what?"

"This stuff," Itachi produced the small bottles of alcohol from his luggage, from where he'd stowed the diner order. "This'll shut your stomach up."

Deidara seemed a little uplifted at the sight of them. "Hey, you remembered my shit, hn."

"Drugs and alcohol."

"Huh?"

"That's all we do together."

"Hn!"

"Let's do something else," Itachi wavered at the thought, envisioning Hikaru's doubts of his brother raising abilities.

Deidara frowned. "But you just suggested it to me, hn."

"Yeah, but, I was testing you."

A curious smile crept onto Deidara's face. He scoffed back laughter. "You afraid to drink, Itachi?"

"Excuse me?"

"Pretty boy doesn't know how to drink."

"Oh, I'm a pretty boy?"

"I'll drink, pretty boy or not," Deidara shrugged. "Just let me at it."

"I'll drink too," Itachi said cynically. "Only, not when what you've picked looks like poison."

"All drink is poison, Itachi! Hn."

Itachi glanced left at the bottles again. Dark liquor resided in foreboding black glass. He reached for one. "What is this stuff anyway?"

"Your dinner, that's what."

He allowed the idea to drift through his head. He had already sent word to Madara regarding the one-man army Kumori attack. There probably hadn't been anyone else who'd followed them over here.

"I guess that's…okay," Itachi bid reluctantly.

{Y*M*M}

The surrounding hills resonated in the hollow bark Hidan emitted. He pressed onwards in his frustration. "What the hell, man?"

Kakuzu tried to tolerate it, as he ambled on beside him. In no particular hurry. "It is rather inconvenient."

"Ha. What is Madara's problem! It's like he can't see, the war that is happening!"

"I wonder if we'll get paid overtime for this one."

"Right in front of his face! Fuck…" Hidan scuffed his shoe along the grass to kick a rock aside. It struck the ground before he continued ranting. "I can't believe the bullshit assignments he's been giving us. Where's all the fighting at? No, it's just stay at home and wait on it."

"I sincerely hope he pays overtime."

"No question. Hey, have you noticed all this Deidara circling we've been doing? Damn it, I feel like it's never ending. First we're launching war cos'a Deidara. Next thing you know we're doing a rescue mission…A rescue mission! He actually deployed people, because one easily defeated ninja showed up on the high way while Deidara was crossing it!"

Kakuzu snorted amusedly. He kept his gait slow but steady.

"What do you think's up with that, anyway? What's Madara's problem?"

"I dunno," Kakuzu answered directly for a moment as the conversation snagged his attention. "But I bought some interesting information off Zetsu."

"Bout what, man?" Hidan looked up curiously. Other than a playful smile, Kakuzu's face betrayed nothing. "Come on, man. What is it?"

Kakuzu snorted at the thought of the news received. How pictures crystallized when all the pieces came together.

"Kuzu. Tell me!"

"Buy it off me," Kakuzu teased, certain Hidan would probably never meet his price tag.

He wondered how much Deidara would have been willing to pay him just then to shut up about it.

{Y*M*M}

Deidara's goodbye looped through his mind. Madara gave up on trying to strategize the plan in front of him. He skipped the pen down onto the desk, sighing.

The last time they were together had been in his very office. The walls still retained Deidara's lingering charm.

Deidara had appeared genuinely happy for the first time down the long road they'd been on together. He was silently accepting of Madara's advances. Madara wondered if he had warmed to them even.

The entire time Madara had kept him for, breathing heavily together in the office way past sunset, Deidara had stared transfixed into Madara's eyes. Madara could practically see his own sharigan reflected there.

Deidara was always the first to break gaze again. Something like shame flushed his face when he woke from the trance of the aftermath.

Madara hadn't expected to ever feel guilty for having forced Deidara the first time. But he did now that it came willingly a few months later.

Madara shuffled papers roughly into alignment on his desk as a knock sounded on his office door. He broke from the reverie with a sharp pang inside his head. "Enter."

"Kuzu's team dispatched," Zetsu began talking before he had entered the room properly. He hovered with one hand on either side of the door handles. "And Sasori's here, to speak with you."

Madara stared at Zetsu intently for a moment, trying to orient himself. "Sasori? He's awake then?"

"Woke this morning."

"Walking around already? Shouldn't he be down and out?"

Zetsu scoffed impudently. "Please. Since when does this lot ever go down and out?"

Madara shrugged, reminded of Deidara's fiery drive as well. The reason he had partnered them together. "Send him in."

Zetsu slipped out without another word.

Sasori wore a withering glare as he stepped inside after him. "Madara."

"And what's gotten you to wake from the dead?"

Sasori still looked dizzy from his sensitive injury, but he kept his head leveled. "Sir. Where is Deidara?"

"Miss your partner, do you?"

"I'm serious." Sasori's eyes spewed questions.

Madara toyed with his reply carelessly, not feeling particularly obligated to answer anything.

"So am I."

"Zetsu says you've sent him away somewhere."

"Does he now?"

"But I don't believe that. That would be stupid. And reckless." Sasori didn't waver at Madara's stung reception of the words. "Since the Kumori are only after him, not us. It's pointless trying to protect something we no longer have."

"I've tried to deter them, Sasori."

"You didn't actually…" Sasori's voice rose. "You sent him away? Are you joking?"

"I'm actually pretty certain, Sasori, that I make my plans in all seriousness. Since while you were sleeping, I was keeping sights set on the Kumori's movements. Do you not think I wanted matters to go this way? The Kumori are meant to think Deidara hidden here. This is where they'll attack next, after all."

"They're not stupid," Sasori chided irritably. His eyes narrowed. "You're playing like you've got nothing to lose."

"I play to win."

"Well don't bet my friend on it!"

Madara trained his glare on the Akatsuki member. The darkness growing in his chest seeped into his voice. "You're out of line, Sasori."

Sasori reined his anger in, but it was too late. The mark indelible. The fury carved into his face. He pulled his posture up into a less outraged position in an attempt to rectify it. He winced as his wound ached at the exerted effort of yelling. "I'm going to get him."

"You will do as I direct you. Itachi is his partner, for the time to come."

"Since when?"

"Or would you rather have him paired to someone who can barely stand on their feet?"

Sasori breathed calm back into his body, weak from its hours of recuperating. He could feel his hands tremble. "Can Itachi protect him?"

"Better than anybody."

"The Kumori are quick. If they find out, they'll hit them full tilt."

"Well they won't find out." Madara felt the tension he'd been warding away since accepting Deidara's proposal to leave the hideout for a week. He'd deluded himself, under Deidara's pretty words of sway, that a week would be harmless. He'd actually been under the impression that he could both survive seven days without Deidara and at the same time provoke the Kumori to launch their war while he was away.

He'd given him Itachi. He'd tried to locate him somewhere few would think to venture.

He was now acknowledging his miscalculations unwillingly.

"They will withdraw," Madara mentioned. "I have already sent Kakuzu and Hidan to team up with them and bring them back."

"Did you want to launch war without Deidara here, Madara?" Sasori worked out suddenly, stumbling onto the only possible explanation. Suspicion crept into his voice. "Cos that's really thoughtful of you."

{Y*M*M}

The darkness loomed around them. They had gotten too drunk to remember there were lights in the room as dusk faded to nightfall.

Deidara had his head in both hands, murmuring incoherently. An empty alcohol bottle laid tipped skew between his crossed legs.

Itachi still had the bottom of his bottle to contend with. The liquor had been as potent as he'd predicted it to be. He searched himself for the courage to put the bottle down. But he ended up consuming until the very last drop.

Deidara smiled up sweetly at him. "Told you…you'd do it. 'Tachi."

Itachi rubbed his eyes, having been wired by the alcohol, but exhausted by Deidara's conversational company. "You told me a lot of things."

Deidara found that funnier than he would have sober. He finished laughing and rolled onto his back against the cold wooden floor. "This room, Itachi."

"Is what?"

"Is cold."

Itachi rolled his eyes, glancing down blearily at Deidara. "I know that. I'm sitting in it."

Deidara giggled. It was such an undiluted expression of happiness, that Itachi deliberated from interrupting it. Deidara sneezed towards the end of it.

"You are cold," Itachi agreed.

Deidara pressed himself up to his knees again. "Hey, Itachi. Guess what I have."

"Something to say?"

"I have mouths on my hands. Isn't that weird?" Deidara lifted a tongued hand towards Itachi's face.

He crinkled his nose at it. "You're just noticing, or..?"

"Bugs me, Itachi."

"Bugs me too."

"I tasted blood earlier."

"You…"Itachi worked the story out through his drunkenness. He smiled. "Your fault, stupid."

"Choo!"

Itachi looked back pitifully as the small sound permeated the stillness. He observed Deidara's disheveled state of being with no wonder why he was shivering. His robe had loosened and slid down off his one shoulder. His bare skin touched the biting air. Itachi slid over to correct the situation. "Here. You'll freeze."

"You'll freeze." Deidara grinned stupidly as Itachi's face came close to his. Itachi did his robe back up attentively. While he was busy, Deidara stuck his tongue out and it caught Itachi on the lips.

Itachi rescinded. "Hey. What was that?"

Deidara giggled, caught off guard himself. He licked his lips from the moment. "You taste like that stuff!"

"What stuff?" Itachi wondered out loud.

"The alcohol, hn!"

"Oh," Itachi remembered the recent last sip from his bottle. "Well that's cos I still had some a minute ago. Didn't down it all in one wave…"

"Come here, I want it…" Deidara pushed forwards and fell onto his hands. His robe slipped down again.

"It's in my mouth, Deidara."

"I don't care."

"You should care."

Itachi wasn't far from the end wall. He fetched into it as Deidara advanced on him. His resistance levels were limited under the influence of his night's drinking excursion.

"Deidara, don't."

"Just a kiss, stupid." Deidara's mind was elsewhere as his body pulled in towards Itachi.

Mixed feelings were catching up to him.

He had found some delusional enjoyment in his last night with Madara, knowing he would be free of him for an entire weak thereafter. The reluctance to sex with him on that final night had dithered in light of that knowledge. And when his resent of Madara had ebbed away for even a moment, it had left room for a slight and simple pleasure to evolve. He had discovered a side to sex that he could appreciate just one night ago.

Itachi inhaled as Deidara's mouth clamped down on his. There was no hesitation. There was nothing that suggested Deidara was unused to sharing his tongue with another man's mouth.

Itachi couldn't break the incident. He felt a wave of heat ride through his veins and consume him. At first the alcohol was in possession of his mind. Next it was a poorly concealed feeling of lust.

His hand touched Deidara's thigh, pulling off too late to go unnoticed. When Deidara broke the kiss to glance down from Itachi's hand to his face, he was smiling.

"My body is art, hn," he said as he drew in again, pushing Itachi's hair out of his face to make room for a kiss.

Itachi tried swallowing the controlling sway of alcohol and desire unsuccessfully. His willpower drained at Deidara's every playful touch. If he hadn't been drunk, he might have been put off by how experienced Deidara's hands were.

"I can feel you," Deidara whispered implicitly, pressing his body deeper into Itachi's contours.

Itachi felt suffocated, but involved himself with the pressing motion. The pressure thrilled his body.

Deidara was partly divided between the realm of Madara and the realm of Itachi. In one sense he knew it was Itachi under him, and Itachi he wanted inside of him. He could remember their conversations. He could laugh easily when Itachi was telling him something he should have been listening to. The memories stirred inside his head, at the same time mingling in and distorting between someone else's. Madara. He could feel how naturally he was aligning his body to another man's. At the back of his mind, the recall of Madara leant him the confidence to crush against Itachi. He was looking for elements of both this time. The emotional and the physical.

He'd known sexual contact for a long time. But he'd never known it to be enjoyable before.

Itachi was making it enjoyable, without even realizing.

He kept pulling away and resisting. He kept trying to restore some sober part of him.

It was taking Deidara's breath. It felt like teasing and he responded accordingly.

Itachi pictured Deidara as he drove his hands up his robe. And yet he had no idea who this was, sharing his space. Sharing his mind. He parted the robe with shaky abruptness. He'd surrendered to lust. An enemy that always defeated him.

Deidara worked his hands up Itachi's spine. He held on for support there while Itachi finished undressing him.

It was frightening in the quiet. The moonlight leaked over them through the blinds of the great window embrasures.

It should have been weird, but in the moment, it was natural.

{Y*M*M}

"Hikaru," Sasuke said irritably, sheathing his sword again. "It's been a while since you jumped me. For a second there I thought I was being attacked." His eyes shimmered with questions. "Am I?"

Hikaru broke out laughing, stepping off the tree and onto the roof top Sasuke was idling on. "No, of course not." His smile brightened. "I've calmed down a lot now, thank you. Now that you're listening to me."

"I'm tolerating you," Sasuke corrected him. "Big difference."

Hikaru rolled his eyes, accustomed to the petty stand offs of younger brothers. "I'm sure there is."

"So why're you bothering me?"

"For this," Hikaru produced a small bird of stone from his pocket.

Sasuke blinked twice at it. "And, this is..?"

"A keepsake."

"Of you. Charmed."

"Not for you," Hikaru said oddly, as he swerved it from Sasuke's unenthusiastic attempt to take it. "It's for your brother."

"My…brother?"

"Yeah-ha. Give it to him before he dies, got that?"

"Why would I do something so arbitrary?"

"Because I said so," Hikaru shoved the sharp bird into Sasuke's hands.

He flicked the hand with the worse stab damage up in frustration. "Ow."

"I'm sorry." Hikaru ruffled his hair, deepening the glare he was receiving. "I also have summin for you, pfft."

"I probably don't want it," Sasuke reckoned, sucking the hand he'd just had smashed by rock.

Hikaru snorted. "Sure ya do. I'm gonna give you the gift of my time."

"Wow. You shouldn't have."

"It's…gonna come as surprising. But I used to be a top rank ninja of the Kumori."

"Everyone knows that."

"But there's something…not everyone knows," Hikaru admitted. He smiled at Sasuke's confusion. "I want to tell you, Sasuke. Because I'm not gonna live to tell Deidara when he comes asking about it."

Sasuke paused, the wind catching in his hair. Clearing way for his doubtful expression to show. "You mean I'm your messenger?"

"You're my ally," Hikaru rectified, propping a hand on Sasuke's shoulder to his disgust. "I need you to know something, Sasuke. I need you to tell him about the circumstance of my death if he asks about it."

"What makes you think he'll ask about it?"

A wounded light flickered in Hikaru's eyes as he stared back at Sasuke. Itachi had broken his brother's faith in long lasting bonds.

"He's my brother," Hikaru smiled implicitly. "I know everything he'll do."

{Y*M*M}

Hey Hikaru…not _everything_ he'll do. Lol.

Sorry.

Okay, my characters seem vaguely childish at times. I hope no one notices. *glances round*

Also, I have not edited this. No time for editing.

I am very busy with exams upcoming. Needa focus, stop distracting me yaoi!~

This is also the reason I'm so terribly late with this update.

Hope the ItaDei parts make it worth it. XD

~AfterForev3R


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